Assess students' ability to design and normalize a relational database schema for a small e-commerce inventory and orders system to Third Normal Form (3NF). Scope: identify core entities (products, categories, inventory, customers, orders, order_items, suppliers), list attributes, determine functional dependencies, eliminate partial and transitive dependencies, assign primary/foreign keys, specify integrity constraints and indexes, and produce a justified 3NF schema with brief sample CREATE TABLE statements or ER notes. Emphasize correctness of normalization, dependency preservation, and practical trade-offs for inventory and order processing.