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From: Larry Coon <lcnospam@assist.org>
Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory
Subject: Re: A Normalization Question
Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2004 14:46:06 -0700
Organization: University of California
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Xref: core-easynews comp.databases.theory:36675
X-Received-Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2004 14:49:14 MST (news.easynews.com)

Neo wrote:

> A clearification. While the 1st, 2nd and 3rd "brown" in the above
> tuple do represent different things (ie fact), the name of each of
> those things is the same (ie string "brown") and it is the name of
> those things that can be normalized.
> 
> Below is approximately how XDb1 normalizes the above tuple.
> 
> Thing   Person  Color  Street
> 1       ->2     ->3    ->4
> 
> Person  Name
> 2       ->5
> 
> Color   Name
> 3       ->5
> 
> Street  Name
> 4       ->5

You'll have to explain why storing "brown" three
times is redundant, while storing ->5 three times
is okay.

Also, you confuse adding useless layers of indirection
with normalization.


Larry Coon
University of California