What process ensures data consistency in a database?

Normalization is a systematic approach to organizing data in a database to minimize redundancy and dependency. By structuring the data into distinct tables and defining relationships between them, normalization helps ensure that each piece of information is stored only once. This process reduces the risk of data anomalies and inconsistency that can arise during data manipulation, such as updates, deletions, and insertions.

Normalization typically involves several normal forms that dictate the required structure of the data. For instance, the first normal form eliminates repeating groups, the second normal form removes partial dependencies, and the third normal form addresses transitive dependencies. By adhering to these standards, databases can maintain integrity and consistency in the stored data, leading to more reliable and accurate information retrieval.

The other options serve different purposes: denormalization is often used to improve read performance by combining tables, replication is about duplicating data to enhance availability and reliability, and indexing is intended to speed up data retrieval without addressing data consistency directly. Therefore, normalization is the process most closely aligned with ensuring data consistency in a database.