your questions are totally unrelated to perl...at this stage
anyway...you should probably have a better grounding in relational database design before starting heated arguments. please refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_normalization as a starting point for database design. There are more database design related concepts to consider than there is space/time to layout here but, understanding and designing a database to be in 3rd normal form caters for most needs
i suspect that you will just try to justify your existing design...instead once you fully grasp 3rd normal form (doesn't take a year) you should have a go at drawing an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) from scratch.
as for authoritative books...Structured Systems Analysis and Design by Edward Yourdon is still the baseline that all other methodologies are judged by. it encompasses data normalization and many other rigorous proven methodologies.
best of luck