First normal form (1NF) is a property of a relation in a relational database. A relation is in first normal form if the domain of each attribute contains only atomic values, and the value of each attribute contains only a single value from that domain.
Edgar Codd, in a 1971 conference paper, defined a relation in first normal form to be one such that none of the domains of that relation should have elements which are themselves sets.
First normal form is an essential property of a relation in a relational database. Database normalization is the process of representing a database in terms of relations in standard normal forms, where first normal is a minimal requirement.
Read more about First Normal Form: Atomicity, 1NF Tables As Representations of Relations
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