Re: first normal form

Hello Mr. Celko,
Thanks for answering.
Unfortunatelly I lost both my 3-rd and 7-th editions of C Date's book, so I have to rely on my memory(otherwise I wouldn't waste bandwith in this newsgroup).
A definition of 1stNF says that you cannot have arrays or repeating groups in a column. I also remember that Date had a definition based on atomicity(which clarifies the case presented). Since the definition with arrays and repeating groups is vague, I'd like to clarify it(for myself):
repeating groups means something like:
SocInsNumber(PK), Name, Child1Name, Child2Name, Child3Name, etc.. arrays mean:
lastName,firstName,wholeName(which is lastName||firstname)

Is that right?
TIA,
DOM joe_celko_at_my-deja.com wrote in message <8bqmi4$740$1_at_nnrp1.deja.com>...
>
>>> a table with firstName,lastName,allName(which is firstName ||
>lastName), is this table in first normal form? <<
>
>There are no repeated groups in the rows. If you had columns for the
>names of his kids in the row, then you would have an non-1NF table.
>But I agree it is not normalized since I have non-atomic data in the
>third column.
>
>--CELKO--
>
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
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Received on Wed Mar 29 2000 - 00:00:00 CEST