What are you talking about? A table has as many columns as the thing it describes has attributes to be described. You can have a fully normalized database with 50 column tables in it, and there's nothing unusual or suspect about that.
Theoretically it's possible to imagine a normalised relation with 50 columns. In practice a table like that is unusual and suspect (frankly, even in a denormalised design).
That is impressively pointless pedantry even for HN, well done.
>Theoretically it's possible to imagine a normalised relation with 50 columns
Yes, that would be what I said. "You're wrong because exactly what you said is correct!"
Any linking of number of columns to normalization is pure nonsense. The only accurate thing that can be said is that if you split a relation into multiple projections, by definition each will have less attributes than the original relation. But this is a triviality and it says nothing about the number of columns in the projected relations.
Pedantry is though. And that's what that entirely pointless post was.
>Any linking of number of columns to normalization is pure nonsense.
That's what I said, that's the point. Don't jump in to a thread you can't be bothered to read.
A R-table is a visual shorthand for a relation -- a way to visualize it on some physical medium (paper, screen) and the two should not be confused.