Re: Define "flatten database" ?

On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 09:07:50 -0500, "Alan" <not.me_at_rcn.com> wrote:

[snip]

>I now understand why you understand it the way you do, but flattening is not
>normalizing. Flattening a relational database is denormalizing. Not all
>denormalizing is flattening, but all flattening is denormalizing- unless
>someone can prove this to be wrong.

     http://www.jargon.8hz.com/html/F/flatten.html says:

     [common] To remove structural information, esp. to filter something with an implicit tree structure into a simple sequence of leaves; also tends to imply mapping to flat-ASCII. “This code flattens an expression with parentheses into an equivalent canonical form.”

     By this definition, it appears that converting XML to comma-delimited would be flattening. XML does not, to my knowledge, use the term "normal form", so this flattening would not be denormalising.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko Received on Mon Jan 31 2005 - 19:09:32 CET