What Is a Database Schema?

Database schemas are crucial in organizing and structuring data into tables with columns, keys, and interrelations. They play an essential role in data integration and analytics by ensuring that data is easily understood and can be transformed into dashboards and reports. A well-designed schema simplifies the work of analysts by removing cleaning and preprocessing tasks from their workflow, eliminating the need to reverse-engineer underlying data models, and providing a clear starting point for analytics projects. Database normalization helps overcome redundancy and lack of clarity in raw data by disaggregating or eliminating redundant, duplicative, or derived data values. To design an effective schema, one must understand the data source's underlying data model, create an entity-relationship diagram (ERD), apply a consistent naming convention, draft and populate tables from the ERD, and produce software to extract, preprocess, and load data into the destination. Automated data integration solutions can help leverage expertise in schema design without having to reinvent the wheel.