_______ is a process of combining multiple tables into a single table in spite of the fact that this may introduce duplicate data in some columns.

• A. Normalization
• B. Merging
• C. Denormalization
• D. Data Cleansing

Answer: (C)

Denormalization is the process of combining multiple tables into a single table, even though this may introduce duplicate data in some columns. This approach is used to speed up queries by reducing the need to join several tables, trading off data redundancy and the risk of update anomalies for faster reads. In contrast, normalization aims to minimize duplication by splitting data into related tables and using keys to connect them, which can make querying slower due to more joins. Merging is a general term for bringing data together, but the explicit concept here involves intentionally duplicating data to improve read performance. Data cleansing, on the other hand, focuses on fixing quality issues and removing unwanted duplicates, not on structuring data to increase redundancy.