Mitigating Normal Form Violations Using Resources-Events-Agents, Resources-Events-Agents-Locations, and Hierarchy: A Knowledge-Based Approach

ABSTRACT Resources-Events-Agents (REA) accounting database systems knowledge can facilitate identification of normal form in databases that are not REA-compliant. This paper examines several database snippets, drawn from Oracle database materials, that have normal form violations and determines that knowledge of REA/REAL entity models (REA-Compliance) provides information that can be used to find those normal form violations in relational tables. I find that REA/REAL knowledge provides a capability that has not been fully leveraged, providing a link between the real-world and academic accounting database systems. Data Availability: Data are published in the paper. JEL Classifications: M4.