> But why oh why did they have to specify FOUR normalization forms? Ignoring compatibility normalizations there are really only two and neither of those two yo

> But why oh why did they have to specify FOUR normalization forms? Ignoring compatibility normalizations there are really only two and neither of those two you can remove. So that's a bit of an odd question. If you want to remove the compatibility forms that's fair but nobody is force to use them. You can consider them "partially normalized" or "not normalized at all" for all intents and purposes