Database Design and Relational Theory: Normal Forms and All That Jazz

© C. J. Date 2019

C. J. DateDatabase Design and Relational Theoryhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-5540-7_3

3. Normalization: Some Generalities

C. J. Date¹ 

(1)

Healdsburg, California, USA

 

Normal: See abnormal.

—from an early IBM PL/I reference manual (1960s)

In this chapter, I want to clarify certain general aspects of further normalization before I start getting into specifics (which I’ll do in the next chapter). I’ll begin by taking a closer look at the sample value of relvar S from Figure 1-1 (repeated for convenience as Figure 3-1 below):

Figure 3-1

The suppliers relvar—sample value

Recall now that the functional dependency (FD)

{ CITY } → { STATUS ...