Word for describing how normal (technical term) a database is

Question

Database Normalization is the process of changing the structure of a formal database schema in order to minimize redundancy.

Database theory describes some states of normalization in order to make promises about the nature of queries on them - these are called Normal Forms, often abbreviated 1NF, 2NF, 3NF (and less commonly, 4NF, 5NF, 6NF).

I'm looking for a correct (grammatically and technically) term for describing how normal a database is - something like:

Implications on Database Normality

Answer 1

I've only ever heard "normalized" and "denormalized". "Sorry, you'll need to update the data in a bunch of places; it's kind of denormalized." So you might hear that a database is "fully normalized", "somewhat denormalized", or "extensively denormalized".

Answer 2

You can say that a database is normalized in 1NF (or 2NF, 3NF, etc.)

You can also say that a database is in 1NF (or 2NF, 3NF, etc.). That's equivalent, even if I would prefer the first sentence.

If you just say that a database is normalized, it means that it's in one of the Normal Forms. I would avoid saying that, because without specifying the NF you don't convey much information to the reader.

Since normalization works through a series of stages, a database in 2NF is also in 1NF (plus no partial dependencies), a database in 3NF is also in 2NF (plus no transitive dependencies), and so on. The process of transforming the database structure in an higher form (e.g. from 1NF to 2NF) is called normalizing a database. The opposite process is called denormalizing a database.