Re: A question for Mr. Celko

> Not all interpretations of 1NF say that they are disallowed. The one that
> makes the most sense to me says that the value should be atomic from the
> database's perspective. In that case you can have any value in an attrbute
> but you are not allowed to "break it open" which means you cannot have the
> nest and unnest operations from the nested relational algebra.

I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean by "break it open". If the value is contained within an attribute, how is it any different to have a relation value versus a date/time value? Clearly there are operators that allow me to access the components of the value in each case, so why does it matter whether the value is a relation, list, struct, etc.,.?

Regards,
Bryn Received on Mon Jul 19 2004 - 19:56:19 CEST