How do you determine how far to normalize a database?

Question

When creating a database structure, what are good guidelines to follow or good ways to determine how far a database should be normalized? Should you create an un-normalized

Answer 1

The original poster never described in what situation the database will be used. If it's going to be any type of data warehousing project where at some point you will need cubes (OLAP) processing data for some front-end, it would be wiser to start off with star schema (fact tables + dimension) rather than looking into normalization. The Kimball books will be of great help in this case.