[frollogaston]

If you find yourself doing a lot of explicit transactions, it can be a sign that your schema isn't as normalized as it should be.

[CodesInChaos]

How does better normalization reduce the need for explicit transactions?

[frollogaston]

The need to change two separate tables atomically means that you probably have info duplicated. Also it can be non-ideal in a web backend cause it means keeping DB connections open longer.

[frollogaston]

Sorry ignore the second sentence, I meant keeps the connection checked out of the pool longer, but also it has nothing to do with normalization.