Re: A Normalization Question

"Neo" <neo55592_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message news:4b45d3ad.0407011117.3cdd577c_at_posting.google.com...
> > I know, but I felt some degree of debunking was needed, even if not
> > complete.
>
> How does your updated schema avoid redundancy of the word "brown" if a
> person named "brown" whose color is "brown" lives on a street named
> "brown". Also if one considered the street named "brown" and the word
> "brown" to be things, how would your schema handle this with respect
> to an entry in table THINGS?

There would never be a relation called "THINGS" containing the attributes in the way you infer. This is your first and most important error. "THINGS" may be a superset of attributes. You need to understand functional dependencies. In normalization, one does not consider the values of the attributes, only the semantics of the relationships among them. The fact that a name, street, color, and anything other attribute has the value of "Brown" has absolutely zero, nada, zip, zilch to do with normalization or redundancy. Nothing at all. Not even on the radar. All it ever does is lead to the kind of confused state you are in.

See my response in another thread. Received on Thu Jul 01 2004 - 21:37:27 CEST