The reason I say that the adjacency list model (i.e. (employee, boss))
is not normalized is that when an employee changes, the change can
affect more than one row wher he is a boss. A normalized database
stored one fact, one way, one place, one time.
Better example of a cyclic problem would be voting paradoxes, or the
hand game "Sissors, Paper, Stone" where Sissors beat paper, paper
beats stone, stone beats sissors. There is a good reason it is a two
player game and not a "three or more" player game.
Received on Fri Jan 18 2002 - 13:02:45 CST
