>Let me ask you - do you have a "customer" or "employee"table with a "first name" field in it? Do you have more than one person in it with the first name of Bob or John or Mary? Do you have a separate table of just first names with an fkey from the customer or employee table to the "firstname" table? Probably not huh? Well- you're denormalized.

Ken,

Your example in the above paragraph has nothing to do with normalization. Normailization is used to ensure the valid use of primary keys and foreign keys.

>Second - do you have any tables with fields that are left empty because the info doesn't apply to the particular record i.e. - an "address line 2" field that isn't used for many records? Well - if you don't have "address line 2" off in a separate table - you're denormalized

Again, this ahs nothing to do with normalization. It can be very dangerous to recommend violating something that you don't understand. Normalization is thrown around by folks who don't know what it is and it gets a bad name because someone showed a bad design and called it normalized.

For the sake of everyone involved in this thread I am going to list the 6 normal forms, if you can tell me which normal form your lastname situtation violates I would be interested in knowing.

1st NF: Remove multivalued or repeating attributes to another child entity.

2nd NF: All non-key attributes must be dependent on the entire primary key

3rd NF: Non-key attributes must be dependent on only the primary key and not on any non-key attribute other than alternate keys.

Boyce-Codd NF: A 3rd NF entities are still in 3rd NF for all feasible alternate keys.

The next two deal with PKs of more than one attribute.

4th NF: Remove independently multivalued components of the primary key to two or more new parent entities.

5th NF: Remove pair-wise cyclic dependencies (appearing within composite primary keys with three or more component attributes) to three or more new parent entities.

Now where do those rules say anything about the lastname field in a customer record? Normalization is a process tool that helps in testing relational database designs for CERTAIN anomalies. Ther are many other sets of rules related to relational design that are NOT normalization.