Re: By The Dawn's Normal Light

"Kenneth Downs"
> This is a penetrating insight. The various discussions on 1NF, atomicity
> and so forth have made good reading, and me thinking, "hmmm, maybe there
is
> something to this..." but it still seems that anything you want to
> represent can be done with the simple man's definitions of 1NF, 2NF and
> 3NF. But trying to turn lists into tables and vice-versa is definitely a
> no-starter with SQL, you have to go to an outside language.

Yes. And I think this is close to the heart of the difference between the way Dawn and I are looking at the elephant.

My view is that, once I learned how, I could represent everything I needed to in classic 3NF. My productivity in business environments skyrocketed, compared to what I had been doing before. And I was able to deliver the bang for the buck, and keep my customers satisfied.

Dawn's view, IIRC, is that just because you CAN represent everything in classic 3NF (implying 2NF and 1NF) doesn't mean that you SHOULD represent everything that way. That there are alternative ways of representing things that cost less and deliver more.

Some of this difference is simply a difference between Dawn's experience and mine. Not all of it. Received on Thu Oct 28 2004 - 15:19:59 CEST