Pluralvalued

Pluralvalued refers to properties of data entities that admit multiple values for a single instance. It is used in data modeling and database design to indicate that an attribute is not restricted to a single value, but can hold a collection such as a set or list. The term is often used interchangeably with multivalued attribute, though some practitioners distinguish between a purely semantic plural value and its stored representation.

In traditional entity-relationship modeling and relational design, pluralvalued attributes pose normalization challenges. First normal form requires atomic values, so pluralvalued attributes are typically decomposed into separate relations. A common pattern is to create a separate table that links the entity’s identifier to each value, forming one-to-many or many-to-many relationships via foreign keys or bridge tables. In modern databases, array or JSON types may be used to store multiple values within a single column, but this can complicate querying, indexing, and integrity guarantees.

Examples of pluralvalued attributes include a person with multiple phone numbers, a product with several tags, or a course with multiple prerequisites. The precise interpretation depends on the domain: the values may be simple identifiers, domain-specific attributes, or more complex structures.

See also: multivalued attribute, normalization, ER model, relational database, one-to-many, many-to-many. The term is more common in data-modeling discussions than in formal logic, where related concepts are described with terms such as multivalued or multiple-valued in different senses.