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
Famous quotes containing the words normal and/or form:
“I don’t mind saying in advance that in my opinion jealousy is normal and healthy. Jealousy arises out of the fact that children love. If they have no capacity to love, then they don’t show jealousy.”
—D.W. Winnicott (20th century)
“Although Samuel had a depraved imagination—perhaps even because of this—love, for him, was less a matter of the senses than of the intellect. It was, above all, admiration and appetite for beauty; he considered reproduction a flaw of love, and pregnancy a form of insanity. He wrote on one occasion: “Angels are hermaphrodite and sterile.””
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)