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From: cdm@gem-hy.Berkeley.EDU (Dale Cook)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Balancing Normalization with Performance
Message-ID: <1990Nov21.204921.11162@inel.gov>
Date: 21 Nov 90 20:49:21 GMT
References: <1092@cortex.med.jhu.edu> <1990Nov20.190315.13505@informix.com> <33265@netnews.upenn.edu>
Sender: news@inel.gov
Reply-To: cdm@gem-hy.Berkeley.EDU (Dale Cook)
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Organization: Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, Idaho Falls, Idaho
Lines: 32

In article <33265@netnews.upenn.edu>, aaron@grad2.cis.upenn.edu (Aaron
Watters) writes:

|> 
|> ALTERNATIVELY there is the phenomenon of the UNJUSTIFIED
|> NORMALIZATION.  Where we make use of an assumption such as
|>    Persons only have one address.
|>    Husband's last name determines Wife's last name.
|> etcetera.  In this case the normalization may DISALLOW information
|> that a user may later want to insert into the database.  This
|> is another issue.			-aaron.

I don't understand what you mean by "unjustified normalization".  In 
fact, I don't think there's any such thing.  One normalizes the 
design, and denormalizes the implementation based on _rational_
decisions about performance, stability, etc.  Your examples above
are examples of incorrect data analysis, and have nothing to do with
normalization.

--- Dale Cook     cdm@inel.gov
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