Describe the purpose of the main steps in the physical design methodology presented in this chapter.

What will be an ideal response?

Step 7 of physical database design considers denormalizing the relational schema to improve
performance. There may be circumstances where it may be necessary to accept the loss of
some of the benefits of a fully normalized design in favor of performance. This should be
considered only when it is estimated that the system will not be able to meet its performance
requirements. As a rule of thumb, if performance is unsatisfactory and a relation has a low
update rate and a very high query rate, denormalization may be a viable option.
The final step (Step 8) of physical database design is the ongoing process of monitoring and
tuning the operational system to achieve maximum performance.