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Comment on Understanding database normalisation: a very short tutorialparent

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I don't think you're seeing my point: the value to "normalization" isn't its specificity or the fact that it's grounded in a formal description. It's that it's a straightforward way to reduce the maintenance burden of software using the database (your words: "prevent specific kinds of logical errors"). That's precisely the value of DRY philosophy.

I don't see it as controversial at all to paint it as a "subset" of DRY; I'm sorry if it offends your academic aesthetic.

If you are curious as to why you have been voted down: your position is "why do people care whether your data is in a specific normal form"? The answer, of course, is that if you don't normalise a relational database then you will find all sorts of problems down the track.

Enumerating the normal forms is important as you typically must do one after another. It's not just academic formalism to expound three normal forms. I suspect you don't know much about relational theory, which is why you feel that normalisation is a "mistake".

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