title: Database design will not support entry of products.
body: <p>I have the database design below:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/fR9UG.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">table design</a></p>
  
  <p>basically, I need to be able to input products that have the following columns:</p>
  
  <p><strong>id, area, category, name</strong></p>
  
  <p>The problem is that if I create the database to the spec in the image above, then wouldn't that still cause repeats in the table catalogue? which would be against the normal forms.</p>
  
  <p>Also it means that the data in catalogue would just be numbers aka references to the other tables. Is there a solution to this issue? as I imagine any catalog site that has a db back-end would have the same issue.</p>
  
  <p>Here is an example that is the same issue just different sinorio if it helps:</p>
  
  <p>I have a product catalog that sells laptops and TVs, do I make a table that has the type of device? because that would look like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>id    -    name    -    type    -    etc
  
  1     -    acerP   -   laptop   -    null
  1     -    acerP   -   laptop   -    null
  1     -    acerP   -   TV       -    null
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Notice how 'laptop' could get repeated 100s of times, normally you would create a new table that has just:</p>
  
  <pre><code>u_id    -    type
  
  101     -    laptop
  102     -    TV
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Then simply join then in the query, but then you would have in the device table:</p>
  
  <pre><code> id    -    name    -    type    -    etc
  
  1     -    acerP   -     101     -    null
  1     -    acerP   -     101     -    null
  1     -    acerP   -     102     -    null
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but now you are repeating the number references.</p>
  
  <p>Am I missing something here, or is this normal?</p>