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I am currently studying Database Design and have come across Database Normalization and its normalization stages.

I know that in order for a table to satisfy 1NF, all column values must be atomic. However, let us say we have a students table like so:

id | first_name | last_name | country_of_origin

For an entry, I can have a student with the following attribute:

1 | John | Doe | Japan

The columns are all single words so the values are considered atomic. However, What about words that contain spaces, say:

1 | John | Doe | United States of America

Is "United States of America" a term that is considered an atomic term? I mean you can technically shorten it to USA but what about countries like Papua New Guinea, where spaces are mandatory to construct that word? I get that comma separated strings like "Japan, Brazil, Canada" isn't considered atomic in this case.

So, what are considered atomic values in database design, what is not?

philipxy
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ninja_nugget
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  • Does the text describe a single entity? Probably it does... – Stu Mar 19 '21 at 09:58
  • @Stu makes sense. So if a text describes a single entity and not multiple in one single column then it is considered atomic. Thank you! – ninja_nugget Mar 19 '21 at 11:21
  • "Atomic" [is in the eye of the application](https://stackoverflow.com/a/44404063/3404097). "1NF" [has many meanings.](https://stackoverflow.com/a/40640962/3404097) All involve replacing some table with parameterized structure by some table(s) with a column per parameter. So you need to tell us your definitions & preferably also textbook name & edition. How are you stuck researching this at many SO faqs? – philipxy Mar 19 '21 at 18:52
  • Does this answer your question? [Normalization in database management system](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40623169/normalization-in-database-management-system) – philipxy Mar 19 '21 at 18:53
  • Before considering posting please read the manual & google any error message & many clear, concise & precise phrasings of your question/problem/goal, with & without your particular names/strings/numbers, 'site:stackoverflow.com' & tags; read many answers. If you post a question, use one phrasing as title. Reflect your research. See [ask] & the voting arrow mouseover texts. – philipxy Mar 19 '21 at 19:31

1 Answers1

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In your case Country_of_origin presumably refers to a country. United States of america is the name of a single country. So the data field contains a single item, and is therefore atomic in this sense of the word. You can't always figure out the atomicity of a given field without reference to the underlying subject matter.

Walter Mitty
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