For efficient data storage, related information is often spread across multiple tables of a database.

Consider an e-commerce business that tracks the products that have been ordered from its website. Business data for the company could be split into three tables:

• orders would contain the information necessary to describe an order: order_id, customer_id, product_id, quantity, and timestamp
• products would contain the information to describe each product: product_id, product_description and product_price
• customers would contain the information for each customer: customer_id, customer_name, customer_address, and customer_phone_number

This table structure prevents the storage of redundant information, given that each customer’s and product’s information is only stored once, rather than each time a customer places an order for another item.