Guidelines for Ideal Table Design
Each table should represents a single theme or subject or entity or transaction
Tables should include primary keys that uniquely identify each record of each table
Avoid the use of smart keys that attempt to embed meaning into primary keys (keys should be meaningless)
A primary key should be a unique, random or sequential collection of alphabetic, numeric or alphanumeric characters
The domain of primary keys should be large enough to accommodate the identification of unique rows for the entire potential universe of records
Use the suffix ID in constructing primary keys to ensure they are readily identifiable
Tables should not contain any of the following: multipart fields, multivalued fields, calculated or derived fields or unnecessary duplicate fields
There should be a minimum amount of redundant data