it's all a subtle misunderstanding of who's doing the considering and what's being considered. the author wants to say 1nf is of no concern to users of rdbms, t

it's all a subtle misunderstanding of who's doing the considering and what's being considered. the author wants to say 1nf is of no concern to users of rdbms, that they can't actually violate 1nf because the system doesn't violate 1nf - however when users are considering normal form it's about the information (the phone numbers) not the data (a string) and in that sense the information is not normalized due to violating first normal form. a different audience, say the rdbms designers, can't have concerns about anything beyond the string - they don't care what you stash in there it's just data and in that sense the data is normalized but the information is not. as an aside I think a lot of this sprouts from subtle ambiguity in the language. you really shouldn't just drop all articles and expect your english to still make sense!