one more normalization post

This is really starting to bug me. I have been arguing with an external group about some database design. Someone said to me, and I summarize here "Normalization does not depend on the data or the relationships between rows".

I was stunned, I sat back and reevaluated the last 10 years of my life. IF the data does not matter, why do I spend all of this time on it? Making tables, creating keys and constraints. With this new view on normalization, why would I ever use more than a few tables?

I think DBA1 (anonymous friend 1) put it best when I brought it up to him, "FAIL".

The statement that data is not important was so utterly bizarre that it borders on madness. Of course the data matters, it is data normalization!

Here's a new rule. People who have no background in IT, Development or Design should not be allowed to know anything about the database layer of an application.