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Decomposition of a relation scheme into Boyce-Codd Normal Form

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Patrick C. FischerAuthors Info & Claims

ACM '80: Proceedings of the ACM 1980 annual conference

Pages 411 - 417

https://doi.org/10.1145/800176.809996

Published: 01 January 1980 Publication History

Abstract

Decomposition into Boyce-Codd Normal Form (BCNF) with a lossless join and preservation of dependencies is desired in the design of a relational database scheme. However, there may be no decomposition of a relation scheme into BCNF that is dependency preserving, and the known algorithms for lossless join decomposition into BCNF require exponential time and space. In this paper we give an efficient algorithm for lossless join decomposition and show that the problem of deciding whether a relation scheme has a dependency-preserving decomposition into BCNF is NP-hard. The algorithm and the proof assume that all data dependencies are functional. We then discuss the extension of our techniques to the case where data dependencies are multivalued.

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Cited By

Mannila HRäihä K(2019)On the relationship of minimum and optimum covers for a set of functional dependenciesActa Informatica10.1007/BF0028941220:2(143-158)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/BF00289412
Koehler H(2006)Finding faithful boyce-codd normal form decompositionsProceedings of the Second international conference on Algorithmic Aspects in Information and Management10.1007/11775096_11(102-113)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2006
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/11775096_11
Neuhold ESchrefl M(1989)Towards Databases for Knowledge RepresentationFoundations of Knowledge Base Management10.1007/978-3-642-83397-7_11(241-257)Online publication date: 1989
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-83397-7_11
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Decomposition of a relation scheme into Boyce-Codd Normal Form
1. Information systems
  1. Data management systems
    1. Database design and models
      1. Relational database model
    2. Query languages
      1. Relational database query languages

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AAIM'06: Proceedings of the Second international conference on Algorithmic Aspects in Information and Management

It is well known that faithful (i.e. dependency preserving) decompositions of relational database schemas into Boyce-Codd Normal Form (BCNF) do not always exist, depending on the set of functional dependencies given, and that the corresponding decision ...

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cover image ACM Conferences

ACM '80: Proceedings of the ACM 1980 annual conference

January 1980

539 pages

ISBN:0897910281

DOI:10.1145/800176

Copyright © 1980 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 January 1980

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Cited By

Mannila HRäihä K(2019)On the relationship of minimum and optimum covers for a set of functional dependenciesActa Informatica10.1007/BF0028941220:2(143-158)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/BF00289412
Koehler H(2006)Finding faithful boyce-codd normal form decompositionsProceedings of the Second international conference on Algorithmic Aspects in Information and Management10.1007/11775096_11(102-113)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2006
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/11775096_11
Neuhold ESchrefl M(1989)Towards Databases for Knowledge RepresentationFoundations of Knowledge Base Management10.1007/978-3-642-83397-7_11(241-257)Online publication date: 1989
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-83397-7_11
Brodie MManola F(1989)Database Management: A SurveyFoundations of Knowledge Base Management10.1007/978-3-642-83397-7_10(205-240)Online publication date: 1989
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-83397-7_10

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