SQL and Relational Theory, 2nd Edition

DATA VALUE ATOMICITY

I hope the previous section succeeded in convincing you that domains really are types, no more and no less. Now I want to turn to the issue of data value atomicity and the related notion of first normal form (1NF for short). In Chapter 1, I said that 1NF meant that every tuple in every relation contains just a single value (of the appropriate type) in every attribute position—and it’s usual to add that those “single values” are supposed to be atomic. But this latter requirement raises the obvious question: What does it mean for data to be atomic?

Well, in A REVIEW OF THE ORIGINAL MODEL of the book mentioned earlier (The Relational Model for Database Management Version 2), Codd defines atomic data as data that “cannot be decomposed into smaller pieces by the DBMS (excluding certain special functions).” Even if we ignore that parenthetical exclusion, however, this definition is a trifle puzzling; at best, it’s certainly not very precise. For example, what about character strings? Are character strings atomic? Well, every database product I know provides a variety of operators—LIKE, SUBSTR (substring), “||” (concatenate), and so on—that rely by definition on the fact that character strings in general can be “decomposed into smaller pieces by the DBMS.” So are such strings atomic? What do you think?

Here are some other examples of values whose atomicity is at least open to question and yet we would certainly want to allow as attribute values in tuples in relations: ...