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> you cannot have things that can be decomposed. Indeed. You couldn’t store integers because those are decomposable into bits. Atomicity was always a BS conce
by epcoa 2y ago
> you cannot have things that can be decomposed.
Indeed. You couldn’t store integers because those are decomposable into bits.
Atomicity was always a BS concept, and Chris Date and Hugh Darwen themselves have written as much on this topic. It didn’t help that although Edgar Codd had a math background, a lot of things published on the relational model just didn’t have formal rigor, but people interpreted it as such.
- Ygg2 2y agoWell without atomicity you can't have 1NF, and thus none of the latter. So let's hope you never store a content of a text content of a configuration or log.
- petalmind 2y agoI don't understand that comment. What do you mean "let's hope" if I can easily store a text content of configuration or log into a column?
- emmelaich 2y agoI believe it's a joke. However ... if you store a CV as a blob then separately store skills, experiences in a different table --- does that make the db design imperfect?
- petalmind 2y agoAh, okay. Yeah, I was thinking about the way how to actually build a non-1NF database. So far my best idea is to store sqlite files as blobs in a different database.
- emmelaich 2y agoEven that is 1NF, probably. As long as you don't have the id,blob duplicated in a table. 1NF (depending on the definition) has a few subtleties that make it either impossible to avoid in any relational database or almost impossible to enforce! By impossible to avoid, I mean the basic rectangular shape of a table. By impossible to enforce, I mean the avoidance of duplicates (without indexes) and NULLs.
- webstrand 2y agoTechnically you're storing the order of the bits, which isn't decomposable.
- petalmind 2y agohaha, I don't want to express disrespect to The Ancients, but I'm bewildered at the entire 3NF/BCNF thing, couldn't they just patch 3NF already by including the BCNF fix? Why do we need to bother with "3NF-but-not-BCNF" as a separate concept? > a lot of things published on the relational model just didn’t have formal rigor, but people interpreted it as such. I wonder if you may have something that substantiates this claim? I agree that relational theory doesn't look very complicated in principle, and it doesn't seem to be very "productive" as a theory. Compared to group theory, for example.