What your describing -- failure to understand the basic of normal form for databases -- is so far better than the types of incompetence I face from organizational service providers (such as health insurance companies and the like).
I wish I faced daily problems like "they don't get normal form".
I see your point, and feel it here too. But my point is more than just normal forms — is is a whole culture of incompetence where normal forms substitute for theory, SQL passes for relational, and MySQL is deemed a proper DBMS (when it is quite like the MS Windows ME of databases).
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA at 2013-09-25T00:09:26Z