martin.whitton (11/14/2011)
paul s-306273 (11/14/2011)
I'd like to say I don't like these questions - but looking at the posts I appear to be in the minority!Anybody else out there with me?
I have to say I'm with you on this one, Paul.
I do acknowledge that different people have different styles of learning and working, and for some people memorizing all the nuances of normalization theory may genuinely help them in their work.
However, the fact that Hugo admits to having to Google this one might suggest that this question is a little on the esoteric side, and that you could be quite good at your job without knowing or caring about the answer!
I don't for a moment imagine that knowing that Chris Date suggested that Heath Normal Form night be a more suitable name than Boyce-Codd Normal Form would help anyone in their work (unless perhaps their work was writing a book about the history of relation theory development in the early years). But a lot of people find this kind of trivia fun, and there's always the hope that some people will read up either the papers referenced in the explanation or some of the things they find when googling for an answer and learn something useful from that.
Tom