April 14, 2026
Normalize Wars: Counting It 11 Times
5NF and Database Design
Dev feud over 'perfect' databases, performance fears, and revenue counted 11 times
TLDR: Author says you can design clean databases without invoking the scariest “5NF,” just model the real world well. Comments explode into a purity vs practicality brawl—some want fewer duplicates, others fear slowdowns—punctuated by jokes about revenue being counted 11 times.
Database guru Alexey Makhotkin just poked the 5NF bear, arguing you don’t need the scariest “fifth normal form” to design clean tables—just start with the real-world model and build from there. He drags the confusing Wikipedia example, leans on simple “ice cream” and “musicians” stories, and basically says: chill, design logically, and you’ll end up normalized anyway. The crowd? Immediately split.
One camp is cheering. User jerf’s vibe: stop worshipping numbered stages and just avoid duplicates and map relationships. Another camp fires back with “real world” alarms: tadfisher jokes that every time someone says “let’s normalize,” ops screams “the database will go down,” and then everyone somehow argues about which kind of ID to use (yep, UUIDs—those unique IDs—become the new cage match). Meanwhile, estetlinus drops the meme of the day: “Why is revenue so high? Because we counted it 11 times, lol.” That’s a dunk on sloppy, denormalized data inflating ARR (annual recurring revenue). And DeathArrow keeps it spicy: sometimes not-normalizing is the right call for speed.
So yes, the post says 5NF is overhyped, and the comments turned it into a soap opera: purity vs practicality, elegance vs uptime, textbooks vs “ship it.” Bonus links for the nerds: Data Demythed and the ice cream explainer video.
Key Points
- •The article critiques traditional explanations of 5NF as needlessly confusing, highlighting issues with Wikipedia’s example.
- •It proposes a design sequence: start from business requirements, build a logical model, then design the physical schema.
- •Using an ice cream scenario, it demonstrates the AB-BC-AC triangle pattern to clarify relationships and avoid redundancy.
- •Using a musicians scenario, it demonstrates the ABC+D star pattern and discusses trade-offs between composite and synthetic primary keys.
- •The author concludes that explicit invocation of 5NF is unnecessary if logical modeling and textbook design practices are followed to preserve normalization.