>Jim, I have comment/question about Peters table being normalized. Believe me I'm not an expert but I've read alot about data normalization. In his situation there is alot of redundant data and from the way I understand normalizing data this is first normal form at best. From the way I understand normalization his situation could be broken into 3 separate tables, One for the person, One for the type of media, and it sound like one for the Title. That way if the name of a title changed you wouldn't have to each media type to change the title or go to several records to change a value of the title. That would put his situation in atleast second normal form and maybe consider by some as third normal form. But then again I could be wrong?? Interested to hear your thoughts.
>
>respectfully
>BW

In the example, the person and the media type can very well be a FK to the tables you mention. Data in other tables would simply not be shown in the example. Normalization rules don't mandate that each table use a sequential number as PK for all tables - this is simply a preference of some programmers (including me, but there are many others that prefer it the other way).

For instance, on the Web page http://searchdatabase.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid13_gci212669,00.html is a fairly "user-friendly" definition of the first three normal forms. IMO, the first two normal forms are fulfilled in the original example. The third one too, assuming the separate tables I mention above exist.