How do I bring a relation/table to first normal form (1NF) when one of the attributes/columns can hold any number of values?

Question

For example,

• MOVIES (movieid, movietitle)

where movietitle can be any number of words, so I believe it's not atomic.

How do you bring something like that to 1NF?

Answer 1

Atomic in this sense is a logical concept. Would you consider the integer 123 not atomic because it has more than one digit? 123 is an agreed upon singular fact, representing a point on the numbers axis. A movie title is the same - it represents a singular agreed upon fact, that a movie with that title exists in the real world. A non atomic value would be “rocky, rocky 2” - a value that specifies 2 facts , and that would violate 1NF. Same would go for the integer 123, if each digit represents a different fact. For example if 1 represents an item color code and the 23 its size.

HTH