This database design project creates a normalized schema for an e-commerce platform. The database must track customers, products, orders, and inventory. The design process begins with identifying entities: Customer, Product, Order, OrderItem, Category, and Review.
Relationships are defined: A Customer has many Orders (1:N). An Order has many OrderItems (1:N). A Product belongs to one Category but a Category has many Products (N:1). Customers write Reviews for Products (N:M).
Normalization eliminates redundancy. Third normal form (3NF) ensures no transitive dependencies. Primary keys use surrogate IDs for simplicity. Foreign keys maintain referential integrity. Indexes are added on frequently queried columns like customer_email and order_date.
