Re: By The Dawn's Normal Light

From: Marshall Spight <mspight_at_dnai.com>
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 15:11:02 GMT
Message-ID: <awued.305997$3l3.153187_at_attbi_s03>


"Laconic2" <laconic2_at_comcast.net> wrote in message news:A-KdnT9Y15YireTcRVn-uw_at_comcast.com...
>
> Here's a definition of 1NF pulled from the web:
>
> Formal Definition:
> A relation is in first normal form (1NF) if and only if all underlying
> simple domains contain atomic values only.
>
> Is this definition of 1NF correct or incorrect?

Definitions do not have a correctness attribute; they are like axioms that way. A definition may be popular or unpopular, but it will never be correct or incorrect. (Or perhaps we could say that the correct definition was the popular one.)

The right way to think about this debate is: which definitions are useful?

Marshall Received on Sat Oct 23 2004 - 17:11:02 CEST

Original text of this message