> Defining a schema forces you to think about what you're building.
YES. Thank you. Sit down with pencil and paper, write down a table name, and start putting attributes into it. Then define a PK, and ask yourself if every attribute is directly related to the PK (a user named foo has an id of 1, and lives in country bar). Repeat. Then ask yourself how you’d join the tables. If you find that something _could_ be represented as a join, but isn’t, consider doing so.
YES. Thank you. Sit down with pencil and paper, write down a table name, and start putting attributes into it. Then define a PK, and ask yourself if every attribute is directly related to the PK (a user named foo has an id of 1, and lives in country bar). Repeat. Then ask yourself how you’d join the tables. If you find that something _could_ be represented as a join, but isn’t, consider doing so.