Normalization for Normal People, "How Long Has This Been Going On and Who Else is Involved?"

There is just a bit of irony in the title to today's installment. The cynical answer might be "Way too long already, dude. You've been talking about attributes for WEEKS now." That's true, but it's a fascinating topic and there is still a bit more to be said, so I'm going to say it. This week I'm also going to shift gears and bring a description of physical table structure into the discussion.

Normalization for Normal People, Part I--The "Language" of the Database, Installment Four

After such a lengthy break I feel I should do a quick review of previous thoughts on the language of the database and how it impacts the way we design our tables.

As I see it, the language of relational databases has three components:

Nouns
Adjectives
Verbs

Spring Break

Yeah, that's it----Spring Break. I was gone on Spring Break for a couple of months. That's why I haven't posted for a while; I was on Spring Break, okay?

Normalization for Normal People, Part I--The "Language" of the Database, cont'd. AGAIN

Last time, I ended my post with an ambiguous reference to my birth date. I did that to make a couple of points. Well, actually I wanted to reinforce a point I'd made in an earlier blog as well as to introduce one new point.

The reinforced point is that ambiguity in natural languages, like English, is desirable

Normalization for Normal People, Part I--The "Language" of the Database, cont'd.

When you are able to apply a single, unambiguous name to every thing, or "entity" you want to track in your database, you are able to slap a label on each one of them, clearly identifying them as that thing.

To return to our language metaphor, there is one noun that serves as the name for each entity and everyone can clearly state which noun that is