From: Perry Valdez

Date: 18 Sep 2005

 

I read your latest article, On the Relational Model, Database, and DBMS Wikipedia Entries.

I also read the entry Relational model in the Wikipedia, and I discovered that there were some comments made by some Wikipedia users about it.

 

1. One Wikipedia editor named Jan Hidders made this remark:

 

The relational model only requires that the relation is in 1NF and according to Chris Date even that is no longer required.

 

I don't remember Chris Date saying 1NF is no longer required" in his books. But what I know is that relations are already in 1NF, and they can have attributes whose values are also relations. Am I correct?

 

2. There's also this comment:

 

As a final comment, while others may disagree, the link to DBDebunk seems pretty inappropriate to me - AFAICT (and I've been around that site quite a lot over the last couple of years), it just seems to funnel people into buying stuff and doesn't explain much unless you're prepared to pay $10 for each "paper"; I wouldn't regard it as the least bit useful for anyone who needs to look up "relational model" in an encyclopedia, and (although not that important) it is pretty dreadful (HTML and design-wise). My 2 cents worth.

--EmmetCaulfield

 

3. Finally, I don't know if you will find this comment funny. It's titled Set Theory Stuff From the Database Normalization Article:

 

There were complaints (which I agreed with) that the set theory definitions in the database normalization article [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_normalization ] were very off-putting and technical. Unfortunately, this is just a subset of the definitions--the ones most applicable to normalization. However, as these definitions apply to more than just normalization, it seems that they would be more appropriately defined in the relational model--or perhaps an article of their own? They certainly were making the other article unreadable.

--Metaeducation

 

 

From: Fabian Pascal

 

1. Ask him to provide the reference. He confuses Date's change of definition of 1NF with "no longer required". Refer him to our first two papers, What First Normal Form Really Means, and What First Normal Form Means Not.

 

2. Typical vociferous ignoramus.

 

3. Ditto.

 

 

Posted 11/11/05