CH 14 A

Informal Design Guidelines for Relational Databases
Relational database design: The grouping of attributes to form "good" relation schemas Two levels of relation schemas:
The logical "user view" level The storage "base relation" level
Design is concerned mainly with base relations Criteria for "good" base relations:
Discuss informal guidelines for good relational design Discuss formal concepts of functional dependencies and normal forms 3NF, BCNF
Semantics of the Relation Attributes

Each tuple in a relation should represent one entity or relationship instance
Only foreign keys should be used to refer to other entities Entity and relationship attributes should be kept apart as much as possible Design a schema that can be explained easily relation by relation. The semantics of attributes should be easy to interpret.
Redundant Information in Tuples and Update Anomalies

Mixing attributes of multiple entities may cause problems
Information is stored redundantly wasting storage Problems with update anomalies:
Insertion anomalies Deletion anomalies Modification anomalies
EXAMPLE OF AN UPDATE ANOMALY

Consider the relation:
EMP_PROJ ( Emp#, Proj#, Ename, Pname, No_hours)
Update Anomaly
Changing the name of project number P1 from Billing to Customer-Accounting may cause this update to be made for all 100 employees working on project P1
Insert Anomaly
Cannot insert a project unless an employee is assigned to . Inversely- Cannot insert an employee unless he/she is assigned to a project.
EXAMPLE OF AN UPDATE ANOMALY (2)

Delete Anomaly
When a project is deleted, it will result in deleting all the employees who work on that project. Alternately, if an employee is the sole employee on a project, deleting that employee would result in deleting the corresponding project.
Design a schema that does not suffer from the insertion, deletion and update anomalies. If there are any present, then note them so that applications can be made to take them into account
Null Values in Tuples

Relations should be designed such that their tuples will have as few NULL values as possible
Attributes that are NULL frequently could be placed in separate relations (with the primary key) Reasons for nulls: a. attribute not applicable or invalid b. attribute value unkown (may exist) c. value known to exist, but unavailable
Spurious Tuples
Bad designs for a relational database may result in erroneous results for certain JOIN operations The "lossless join" property is used to guarantee meaningful results for join operations The relations should be designed to satisfy the lossless join condition. No spurious tuples should be generated by doing a natural-join of any relations
Functional Dependencies
Functional dependencies (FDs) are used to specify formal measures of the "goodness" of relational designs FDs and keys are used to define normal forms for relations FDs are constraints that are derived from the meaning and interrelationships of the data attributes
Functional Dependencies (2)

A set of attributes X functionally determines a set of attributes Y if the value of X determines a unique value for Y X Y holds if whenever two tuples have the same value for X, they must have the same value for Y If t1[X]=t2[X], then t1[Y]=t2[Y] in any relation instance r(R) X Y in R specifies a constraint on all relation instances r(R) FDs are derived from the real-world constraints on the attributes
Examples of FD constraints
Social Security Number determines employee name
SSN ENAME
Project Number determines project name and location

PNUMBER {PNAME, PLOCATION}
Employee SSN and project number determines the hours per week that the employee works on the project
{SSN, PNUMBER} HOURS
Functional Dependencies (3)

An FD is a property of the attributes in the schema R The constraint must hold on every relation instance r(R) If K is a key of R, then K functionally determines all attributes in R (since we never have two distinct tuples with t1[K]=t2[K])
Inference Rules for FDs

Given a set of FDs F, we can infer additional FDs that hold whenever the FDs in F hold Armstrong's inference rules
A1. (Reflexive) If Y subset-of X, then X Y A2. (Augmentation) If X Y, then XZ YZ (Notation: XZ stands for X U Z) A3. (Transitive) If X Y and Y Z, then X
A1, A2, A3 form a sound and complete set of inference rules
Additional Useful Inference Rules

Decomposition
If X YZ, then X Y and X Y and WY Y and X Z, then X Z YZ Z
Union
If X If X
Psuedotransitivity
Z, then WX
Closure of a set F of FDs is the set F+ of all FDs that can be inferred from F

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Informal Design Guidelines for Relational Databases

Semantics of the Relation Attributes

Redundant Information in Tuples and Update Anomalies

EXAMPLE OF AN UPDATE ANOMALY

EXAMPLE OF AN UPDATE ANOMALY (2)

Null Values in Tuples

Functional Dependencies (2)

Project Number determines project name and location

Functional Dependencies (3)

Inference Rules for FDs

A1, A2, A3 form a sound and complete set of inference rules

Additional Useful Inference Rules

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