Beginning Microsoft SQL Server 2008 ... - S3 Tech Training

Chapter 8: Being Normal: Normalization and Other Basic Design Issues
How It Works
Much like when we added the table in the previous section, SQL Server is constructing SQL behind the
scenes to make the changes you need. So far, it has added the relationship to the diagram only — if you
hover over that relationship, you even see a tooltip with the relationship’s name and nature, as shown in
Figure 8-21.
Figure 8-21
Notice the asterisk on both tables!!! The changes we have made have only been added to the change list
that you’ve made to the diagram — they will not be added to the physical database until you choose to
save the diagram!
There is an instance where the way the line is displayed will change — when we “disable” the foreign
key. We saw how to disable constraints in our last chapter, and we can do it in the Relationship dialog
by changing the Enforce Foreign Key Constraint drop-down setting to No. When you do that, your line
will change to let you know that the constraint has been disabled. It will now look something like
Figure 8-22.
Figure 8-22
If you see one of these, you’re first question should be “Why is that disabled?” Maybe it was intentional,
but you’ll want to be sure.
De-Normalization
I’m going to keep this relatively short since this tends to get into fairly advanced concepts, but remember
not to get carried away with the normalization of your data.
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