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From: Alfredo Novoa <anovoa@ncs.es>
Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory
Subject: Re: Dawn doesn't like 1NF
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Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2004 22:46:53 +0200
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Xref: dp-news.maxwell.syr.edu comp.databases.theory:26612

On Thu, 07 Oct 2004 12:06:58 -0400, Kenneth Downs
<firstinit.lastname@lastnameplusfam.net> wrote:

>> The problem is that "simple" and "atomic" are not precise terms.
>> 
>> For instance: Are strings simple or complex?
>> 
>
>Answer by asking if a query will need to split the string.  If yes, it has
>internal structure and is not atomic.  If no, it is atomic.  Only a single
>instance of yes renders it complex.

According to this: strings with one or zero characters are atomic and
the others are not. Well, this is not too bad.

>The only way to confuse yourself over this is to mistake the internal
>patterns of a column's contents for meaningful sub-atomic values.  So if
>the column "COMPANY_NAME" tends to have a lot of instances of the same
>sub-atomic values ", Inc." and ", LLC", we mistakenly conclude that the
>string must be further split to assure data correctness.  But this is not
>true, the string is in fact atomic

I see an evident contradiction.

select * from customers where company_name like "%Inc."

>, it just so happens to have repeating
>patterns inside of it.  So long as the strings are picked up and dropped
>onto correspondence unaltered, the string is atomic.

So now the string is atomic depending on what you do with it.

It sounds a little strange to me.


I recomend you and Laconic2 to read Date's writings in order to
understand why "atomic" is not a precise term.


Regards.