First Normal Form (1NF)
The First Normal Form addresses the problem of atomicity. Atomicity here refers to a table's values not being able to be divided any further. To put it plainly, one cell cannot contain more than one value since, in such cases of composite or multi-valued attributes, the 1NF is violated. If each attribute in a relation is a single-valued attribute, the relation is in the first normal form.
In order to better grasp the concept of 1NF, consider the following example. Let’s say we have a table with the name, department, and office location of the employees of a given company, like so:
