>>>Right. I remember a couple of conversations where the illustration of being an accomplished musiscian was used. Before you can "jam", and by some accounts "break" the rules, you need to be so thoroughly grounded in those rules that you KNOW when you can break them.

Nonsense - as a (now mostly retired) professional and semi-professional rock/jazz musician for almost twenty years - and as somebody that was schooled in classical to start with - and as somebody who has played with musicians from the highly trained to the pure "learned in the garage" - I can PROMISE you that one sliver of talent is worth all the training in the world. The BEST musicians or "jammers" just "feel it" - they don't think about what they are doing.. On the other hand - those with lots of training that don't "feel it" come off as mechanical, klunky, and stiff when trying to improvise.

I agree that the VERY best are a combination of the raw talent and the training - but the former is the more important of the two.

To a degree - it is the same in programming and DB design - those who can just start putting a DB or app together and "feel" their way through it as they go have a greater skill than those who must follow "mathematical" rules somebody else has developed to "get it right". It is a bit of an iterative process - a DB improvisation of sorts - but like a "jam" it comes out a lot smoother, more natural, and interesting in the end! If you have the talent for it - can see the relations - understand what is practical and what is "right" - and keep the end in focus (meaning how the user will interact with it) from the beginning - normalization works itself out.

It's like the algebra problems in school - some kids had to go through the process of applying the "rules" they had memorized - a few kids just "saw it" - what else can I say?

Thanks,
Ken