Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) are designed to work best with normalized databases. One of the key differences between an indexed service access method database and a normalized database is that a normalized database has less data redundancy. For example, the file and table record formats used by Btrvapp.exe and Mybtrv32.dll for the Titlepub.btr file and the titlepublisher table have redundant data. Specifically, the publisher information is stored for every title. Therefore, if a publisher manages more than one title, its publisher information will be stored for every title entry it manages. An ISAM-based system such as Btrieve neither provides join functionality nor groups data from multiple files at the server. Therefore, ISAM-based systems such as Btrieve require that developers add the redundant publisher data to the Titles table to avoid manual join processing of two separate files at the client.
With a normalized database, the titlepublisher table is transformed into two tables: a Title table and a Publisher table. The Title table has a column that contains a unique identifier (consisting of numbers or letters) that corresponds to the correct publisher in the Publisher table. With relational databases, multiple tables can be referenced together in a query; this is called a join.
The Data Transformation Services (DTS) feature used in the data migration stage can help you automate the migration and transformation of your data from a source database to a destination database. A data transformation consists of one or more database update statements. Each software application requires specific data transformations. These migration and transformation routines should be designed and saved for reuse by the Independent Software Vendor (ISV) or application developer who understands the business logic of the database. DTS helps to ensure that the data transformations occur in the right order and can be repeated hundreds of times for different ISV customers.
Consider using DTS to automate the migration and normalization of your customers’ databases. The ability of DTS to save routines helps you repeat the migration process easily for many customers. DTS can migrate any data that can be accessed through ODBC drivers or OLE DB providers and move the data directly into another ODBC/OLE DB data store.