I work with an engineering application that uses a 5th/6th normal form database that is implemented in standard SQL server/Oracle DBs. It is awful and painful.

I work with an engineering application that uses a 5th/6th normal form database that is implemented in standard SQL server/Oracle DBs. It is awful and painful. A simple query with maybe five properties and 2 relationships takes upwards of 20 joins. Yet the database only has 4 tables...