Jamie

What are your thoughts on the subject? You have a lot of comments and
questions, but I don't have a sense of where you stand.

You state that you "know that the ISBN is an excellent example of a key" --
on what do you base this assertion?

The "one fact, one field" statement is a paraphrase of the notion of
atomicity, which seems to be at the heart of 1NF.

Perhaps your Google preferences need resetting -- I just found a slew of
references to ways of stating ("one fact, one field", and "one field, one
fact").

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Access MVP

"Jamie Collins" wrote in message
oups.com...

Jeff Boyce wrote:
Periodically the subject of "intelligent keys" shows up here in the
tablesdbdesign newsgroup. The consensus has seemed to me to argue
against
combining multiple facts into a single field

Is this the same consensus that recommends autonumber primary keys, by
any chance g?

The underlying notion is "one fact,
one field".

I've not seen this soundbite before. My google search:


http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%2....*&qt_s=Search

turned up nothing. Could you clarify your point, please?

That an ISBN "contains many facts" doesn't, in itself, qualify it as a
good
example of a key, does it? In fact, I don't know if an ISBN is a single
field (then, by 1NF standards, it would not be a good design), or is
itself
a concatenation of multiple, single-fact fields...

I'm not sure what you are getting at here. I know that the ISBN is an
excellent example of a key and that it contains multiple facts. Are you
saying the ISBN is a violation of 1NF? This is the first time I've
heard this suggested but this could be interesting. Could you expand
your thoughts, please?

Jamie.

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