Normalization is a foundational concept in relational database design that aims to organize data efficiently by eliminating redundancy and ensuring data consistency. When you design a database without considering normalization, you may end up duplicating information across multiple records, which can lead to anomalies and inconsistencies when data is updated, inserted, or deleted. The primary goals of normalization are to minimize data redundancy, avoid update anomalies, and make the database easier to maintain and query. By breaking down large, denormalized tables into smaller, related tables, normalization helps you achieve a more robust and scalable database structure.

To address redundancy in the student_courses_denormalized table, you would follow a step-by-step normalization process. First, identify repeating groups and duplicated information. In this case, student details and course details are repeated for every enrollment. The next step is to separate the data into distinct tables: one for students, one for courses, and one for enrollments that links students to courses. By assigning primary keys to each table and using foreign keys to establish relationships, you remove redundant information and ensure each piece of data is stored only once. This process typically involves progressing through normal forms, starting with First Normal Form (1NF) to eliminate repeating groups, then moving to Second Normal Form (2NF) and Third Normal Form (3NF) to further refine the structure and remove partial and transitive dependencies.

Here is the SQL code used to create the normalized tables:

CREATE TABLE students (
    student_id INT PRIMARY KEY,
    first_name VARCHAR(50),
    last_name VARCHAR(50),
    email VARCHAR(100),
    date_of_birth DATE
);

CREATE TABLE courses (
    course_id INT PRIMARY KEY,
    course_name VARCHAR(100),
    course_code VARCHAR(20),
    credits INT
);

CREATE TABLE enrollments (
    enrollment_id INT PRIMARY KEY,
    student_id INT,
    course_id INT,
    enrollment_date DATE,
    grade CHAR(2),
    FOREIGN KEY (student_id) REFERENCES students(student_id),
    FOREIGN KEY (course_id) REFERENCES courses(course_id)
);