Re: Views for denomalizing

On Sat, 5 Feb 2005 18:24:22 -0600, "Dawn M. Wolthuis" <dwolt_at_tincat-group.comREMOVE> wrote:

>> I don't see a lot of usefulness in creating such a term.
>
>Does the other topic I started on this on how products that now describe one
>of their features as being that they are Non-First-Normal-Form (NF2 or NFNF,
>for example) are now, be definition, potentially IN 1NF by the new
>definition.

As far as I know such products are very far from being relational so it does not make sense to talk about normalization in that context.

>That is great, but hiding that fact by simply redefining underlying terms is
>confusing the message. People can now say some of the same words and mean
>something entirely different and their audience might not even know.

But when a term is not well defined it is a good thing to define it properly. We always can explain what 1NF really means to the confused audience.

>>>This always throws me off since it is SQL NULLS -- three-valued logic
>>>NULLs -- that are disallowed. For any tools where NULL is a value, rather
>>>than the absense of value, this is not an issue.
>>
>> I don't know such tools. SQL nulls are not values.
>
>Perhaps you will trust me that there are such tools where "null" is the name
>of a value which can be compared using a two-valued logic.

Ok, but I suppose that those tools are very far from being relational, so they are irrelevant to the discussion of 1NF.

>> But there is a rule that says that all the tuple attributes must have
>> a value, so nothing with nulls might be a relation.
>
>Correction: Nothing with a SQL null or a three-valued logic null can be a
>relation, but for tools where "null" is a value, this is not an issue.

But I am afraid that such tools don't use relations.

>> IBM knows very little about the Relational Model. You should ignore
>> all that.
>
>Wasn't Codd an IBM employee when he wrote his early papers?

Yes but it does not change anything. IBM never understood the RM and they created the SQL aberration. Codd, Date and now Darwen abandoned IBM.
>I'm thinking
>there are people at IBM who know quite a bit about relational theory,
>whether they opt to completely buy into it or not.

If you know a bit about relational theory you always opt to buy into it.

If still there are people at IBM who know about relational theory it is clear that they don't have any decision power.

Regards Received on Wed Feb 09 2005 - 20:04:41 CET