Difference between Normalization and Partitioning in DBMS

Question

Is there any difference between the term 'Normalization' and 'Partitioning' used in Database management system? I tried google it but couldn't find a proper answer in simple words. Also what is the difference between Horizontal and Vertical Partitioning?

Answer 1

Database normalization involves designing the tables in the database to reduce or eliminate duplicated data. Normalization is a logical database design issue.

Horizontal partitioning is the process of breaking a large monolithic table into a series of smaller subtables which can be queried faster and managed more effectively by the DBMS. (This is what most people mean when they talk about "partitioning").

Vertical partitioning is the process of using multiple tables to store the data for a single entity; thus, instead of a single table with 100 columns you might have 4 tables with 25 columns each. Reasons for vertical partitioning might include storing large columns (e.g. BLOBs) or infrequently used columns on inexpensive-but-slow storage devices, while storing more-frequently-accessed columns on faster-but-more-expensive storage devices.

Partitioning is a physical database design issue.

Answer 2

To your first question yes they are completely different concepts. Normalisation is the process where-by you remove repeated data and store it in referential tables. Normalisation on Wikipedia

Partitioning reefers to the actual physical storage of the data on disk.

I could reword it but this puts it simply enough.