dawn wrote:
> David Cressey wrote:
>
>>I'd like to suggest a new Normal Form definition, one that I'm calling Base
>>Normal Form, for lack of a better term.
>>
>>The purpose is NOT to advance theory any further. It's to make it easier to
>>teach introductory database design.
>>
>>Here it is:
>>
>>
>>A table is in base normal form if and only if it has at least one candidate
>>key.
>
> I think that what you are describing is a mathematical function
> (sometimes referred to as a mapping), perhaps?
I think that would be very confusing. First, his table actually has
ordering, functions don't. Second, functions are binary relations, and
even though you could interpret every n-ary relation as a binary
relation, that is different from actually being the same. Finally, if
there are multiple candidate keys then it actually represents several
functions. It's really not a good idea to confuse the concept of
relation and function.
Received on Thu Jul 07 2005 - 13:11:55 CDT
