Re: Who first (publicly) asserted 3NF is "good enough"?

"Roy Hann" <specially_at_processed.almost.meat> wrote in message news:iqKdneSFqv3H-ZPYRVnygg_at_pipex.net...
> It has always seemed to me that nothing looks more obviously and
intuitively
> wrong than a table that is in third normal form (3NF) but not also 4NF.
> Furthermore I rarely see violations of 4NF "in the wild" in databases
> intended to support core business transaction processing (as opposed to
say
> DBs for decision support or data warehousing). This makes me think even
> ill-informed database designers can immediately spot the problem and avoid
> it even if they don't know what it's called.
>
> Assuming I'm right about the above it is baffling that one so frequently
> sees books and articles in which it is asserted that 3NF is "good enough".
> I assume the authors don't actually know what 4NF (and 5NF) is and they
are
> quoting and re-quoting some original source that gave them permission to
> ignore 4NF etc.
>
> It's probably far too late to get a confident answer now, but does anyone
> know if there was a single authoritative writer (long ago) who expressed
> this foolish idea?
>
> Roy
>
>

I heard it as early as 1984. I can't tell you who I heard it from, but it was someone who knew a lot more about it than I did at the time. Received on Mon Sep 18 2006 - 13:20:58 CEST