Date suggests that "the notion of atomicity "has no absolute meaning"": a value may be considered atomic for some purposes, but may be considered an assemblage of more basic elements for other purposes. If this position is accepted, 1NF cannot be defined with reference to atomicity. Columns of any conceivable data type (from string types and numeric types to array types and table types) are then acceptable in a 1NF table—although perhaps not always desirable; for example, it may be more desirable to separate a Customer Name column into two separate columns as First Name, Surname.