'''Data normalization''' is the process of reducing data to its [[Canonical form|canonical form]].
For instance, [[Database normalization]] is the process of organizing the [[Field (computer science)|fields]] and [[Table (database)|table]]s of a [[relational database]] to minimize [[Data redundancy|redundancy]] and dependency. In the field of [[software security]], a common [[Vulnerability (computing)|vulnerability]] is unchecked [[malicious input]]. The mitigation for this problem is proper [[input validation]]. Before input validation may be performed, the input must be normalized, i.e., eliminating encoding (for instance [[Character encodings in HTML|HTML encoding]]) and reducing the input data to a single common [[character set]].
