Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!tellab5!chinet!dhartung
From: dhartung@chinet.chi.il.us (Dan Hartung)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Relational Databases
Message-ID: <1991Jun10.064922.18368@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 10 Jun 91 06:49:22 GMT
References: <1991Jun07.063749.7904@chinet.chi.il.us> <1991Jun08.124337.29813@uvmark.uucp> <7Q--HLB@cs.widener.edu>
Organization: Chinet - Chicago Public Access UNIX
Lines: 30

larry@cs.widener.edu (Larry Sigmond) writes:
>jim@uvmark.uucp (Jim Todhunter) writes:
>>
>>Just a minor correction to this posting.  A relational database does NOT
>>need to be normalized.  In fact, some of the most interesting current
>>research is the area of NFNF (non first normal form) relational models.
>>This is a very active area of investigation because there are serious
>>deficiencies in the first normal form model.  
>
>I'd be interested to hear an example of a deficiency caused by First 
>Normal Form or a reference to the research.

Well, on p. 200 of Codd's book he answers his critics (his sometime
partner Date is cited!) about supposed "Alleged Breakdown of Normalization".
The criticism seems (and I am interpreting filtered information here)
to be based on problems of row insertion and resultant redundancy or
nulls in primary relations.  Codd says that the relational model has
an answer for this, but it's too abstruse for me to follow clearly.

I'm not 100% sure this is related to what Jim said, but my guess would be
that it is.

Hm -- I wanted to get the citation for you, but there seems to be a typo
or a lost bibilographic entry.  The in-text citation is "Date 1986", but
there are only 1984 and 1987 entries in the bibliography.
-- 
Daniel A. Hartung           |  "What's the difference anyway, between being
dhartung@chinet.chi.il.us   |  safe and being rad, the joke's on us, we've
Birch Grove Software        |  all been had."  -- John Wesley Harding
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