> In particular, relational database theory does not require tables to have homogeneous table rows that consist entirely of scalar values. Are you sure about t

> In particular, relational database theory does not require tables to have homogeneous table rows that consist entirely of scalar values. Are you sure about that? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_normal_form https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_normal_form Homogenous values are not required, but having atomic/scalars as a fundamental unit of a relation is a pretty core concept in database normalization theory. Or are you saying database normalization is a performance optimization and we should judge RDBMS' by their support for relational algebra/calculus and not normalization theory?