What does 4NF stand for?

Fourth Normal Form

The abbreviation 4NF stands for Fourth Normal Form in computer science, especially in the context of database design and normalization. Fourth Normal Form is a higher level of organizing data in a relational database, going beyond the requirements of Third Normal Form (3NF). A table is in 4NF if it is already in 3NF and has no multi-valued dependencies, meaning each piece of information is stored only once and doesn’t repeat across rows. People searching for “4NF in database,” “Fourth Normal Form example,” or “database normalization steps” want to build databases that avoid redundancy and are easier to update.

Using 4NF is important for large or complex databases where managing repeating groups and dependencies could lead to data problems. Applying Fourth Normal Form makes databases cleaner, more consistent, and more reliable.