repeating group

1 definition found

repeating group - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  repeating group
  
     <database> Any attribute that can have multiple values
     associated with a single instance of some entity.  For
     example, a book might have multiple authors.
  
     Such a "-to-many" relationship might be represented in an
     unnormalised relational database as multiple author columns
     in the book table or a single author(s) column containing a
     string which was a list of authors.  Converting this to "first
     normal form" is the first step in database normalisation.
     Each author of the book would appear in a separate row along
     with the book's primary key.  Later nomalisation stages
     would move the book-author relationship into a separate table
     to avoid repeating other book attibutes (e.g. title,
     publisher) for each author.
  
     (2005-07-28)