Re: Pizza Example

Good.

Digressing, I'll point out that my introduction to first, second, and third normal forms came when I was still designing indexed files to store data, but could accomplish a join fairly easily. The theory transposes to files and records remarkably well, and it helped me a lot, even before I went to relational databases.

It only took me a week to learn HOW to normalize (up to 3NF). It took longer to learn WHEN to normalize, and even longer to learn WHAT to do when I decide not to normalize.

I think the discussions about multiple ways of modeling the subject matter get derailed by the "one true religion versus diabolic heresy" paradigm that a lot of us suffer from. Some of your responses to me indicate that you were probing to see if I was a self appointed Inquisitor or not.

I don't think I am. But I might write like one at times.

I'm actually curious to see an alternative formalization. And, like any formalization, it will be more useful in some contexts and less useful in others. Received on Wed Apr 07 2004 - 16:12:07 CEST