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Relational Database Design

The document discusses features of good relational database design. It provides examples of combining and decomposing schemas. A combined schema for section and sec_class is proposed that avoids repetition by including all attributes in one relation. The concept of functional dependencies is introduced, where the values of some attributes determine the values of other attributes. Functional dependencies can indicate when a schema should be decomposed into multiple relations.

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Christin Swanson
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80 views

Relational Database Design

The document discusses features of good relational database design. It provides examples of combining and decomposing schemas. A combined schema for section and sec_class is proposed that avoids repetition by including all attributes in one relation. The concept of functional dependencies is introduced, where the values of some attributes determine the values of other attributes. Functional dependencies can indicate when a schema should be decomposed into multiple relations.

Uploaded by

Christin Swanson
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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RELATIONAL DATABASE DESIGN

FEATURES OF GOOD RELATIONAL DESIGN


Combine Schemas?

• Suppose we combine instructor and department into inst_dept


o (No connection to relationship set inst_dept)

• Result is possible repetition of information

A Combined Schema Without Repetition

• Consider combining relations


o sec_class(sec_id, building, room_number) and

o section(course_id, sec_id, semester, year)

• into one relation


o section(course_id, sec_id, semester, year,
building, room_number)

• No repetition in this case


What About Smaller Schemas?
• Suppose we had started with inst_dept. How would we know to split up (decompose) it
into instructor and department?

• Write a rule “if there were a schema (dept_name, building, budget), then dept_name
would be a candidate key”
• Denote as a functional dependency:

• dept_name → building, budget

• In inst_dept, because dept_name is not a candidate key, the building and budget of a
department may have to be repeated.
o This indicates the need to decompose inst_dept

• Not all decompositions are good. Suppose we decompose


employee(ID, name, street, city, salary) into

 employee1 (ID, name)


 employee2 (name, street, city, salary)
• The next slide shows how we lose information -- we cannot reconstruct the original
employee relation -- and so, this is a lossy decomposition.

• A Lossy Decomposition

• Example of Lossless-Join Decomposition

• Lossless join decomposition


• Decomposition of R = (A, B, C)
R1 = (A, B) R2 = (B, C)

First Normal Form

• Domain is atomic if its elements are considered to be indivisible units


o Examples of non-atomic domains:

 Set of names, composite attributes

 Identification numbers like CS101 that can be broken up into parts


• A relational schema R is in first normal form if the domains of all attributes of R are
atomic

• Non-atomic values complicate storage and encourage redundant (repeated) storage of


data
o Example: Set of accounts stored with each customer, and set of owners stored
with each account

• We assume all relations are in first normal form

• Atomicity is actually a property of how the elements of the domain are used.
o Example: Strings would normally be considered indivisible

o Suppose that students are given roll numbers which are strings of the form
CS0012 or EE1127
o If the first two characters are extracted to find the department, the domain of roll
numbers is not atomic.
o Doing so is a bad idea: leads to encoding of information in application program
rather than in the database.

• Goal — Devise a Theory for the Following


• Decide whether a particular relation R is in “good” form.
• In the case that a relation R is not in “good” form, decompose it into a set of relations
{R1, R2, ..., Rn} such that
o each relation is in good form

o the decomposition is a lossless-join decomposition

• Our theory is based on:


o functional dependencies

o multivalued dependencies

FUNCTIONAL DEPENDENCIES

• Constraints on the set of legal relations.

• Require that the value for a certain set of attributes determines uniquely the value for
another set of attributes.
• A functional dependency is a generalization of the notion of a key.

• Let R be a relation schema

α ⊆ R and β ⊆ R

• The functional dependency

• α →β
holds on R if and only if for any legal relations r(R), whenever any two tuples t1 and t2 of
r agree on the attributes α , they also agree on the attributes β . That is,

t1[α ] = t2 [α ] ⇒ t1[β ] = t2 [β ]

• Example: Consider r(A,B ) with the following instance of r.

• On this instance, A → B does NOT hold, but B → A does hold.

• K is a superkey for relation schema R if and only if K → R


• K is a candidate key for R if and only if

K → R, and
for no α ⊂ K, α → R

• Functional dependencies allow us to express constraints that cannot be expressed


using superkeys. Consider the schema:
inst_dept (ID, name, salary, dept_name, building, budget ).
We expect these functional dependencies to hold:

dept_name→ building

and ID à building
but would not expect the following to hold:

dept_name → salary
Use of Functional Dependencies
We use functional dependencies to:
o test relations to see if they are legal under a given set of functional
dependencies.
 If a relation r is legal under a set F of functional dependencies, we
say that r satisfies F.
o specify constraints on the set of legal relations

 We say that F holds on R if all legal relations on R satisfy the set


of functional dependencies F.

• Note: A specific instance of a relation schema may satisfy a functional


dependency even if the functional dependency does not hold on all legal
instances.
o For example, a specific instance of instructor may, by chance, satisfy
name → ID.
• A functional dependency is trivial if it is satisfied by all instances of a relation
o Example:

 ID, name → ID

 name → name

o In general, α → β is trivial if β ⊆ α

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