The Decomposition Versus Synthetic Approach to Relational Database Design.

Ronald Fagin: The Decomposition Versus Synthetic Approach to Relational Database Design. VLDB 1977: 441-446

@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/vldb/Fagin77,
  author    = {Ronald Fagin},
  title     = {The Decomposition Versus Synthetic Approach to Relational Database
               Design},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Very Large
               Data Bases, October 6-8, 1977, Tokyo, Japan},
  publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
  year      = {1977},
  pages     = {441-446},
  ee        = {db/conf/vldb/Fagin77.html},
  crossref  = {DBLP:conf/vldb/77},
  bibsource = {DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de}
}

Abstract

Two of the competing approaches to the logical design of relational databases are the third normal form decomposition approach of Codd and the synthetic approach of Bernstein and others. The synthetic approach seems on the surface to be the more powerful; unfortunately, to avoid serious problems, a nonintuitive constraint (the "uniqueness" of functional dependencies) must be assumed. We demonstrate the fourth normal form approach, which not only can deal with this difficulty, but which is also more powerful than either of the earlier approaches. The input of the new method includes attributes (potential column names), along with semantic information in the form of functional and multivalued dependencies; the output is a "good" (fourth normal form) logical design. The new method is semi-automatic, which is especially helpful in the case of a very large database with many attributes that interrelate in complex ways.

ACM SIGMOD Anthology

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Printed Edition

Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, October 6-8, 1977, Tokyo, Japan. IEEE Computer Society 1977
Contents

References

[1]: Catriel Beeri, Ronald Fagin, John H. Howard: A Complete Axiomatization for Functional and Multivalued Dependencies in Database Relations. SIGMOD Conference 1977: 47-61
[2]: Philip A. Bernstein: Synthesizing Third Normal Form Relations from Functional Dependencies. ACM Trans. Database Syst. 1(4): 277-298(1976)
[3]: Philip A. Bernstein, J. Richard Swenson, Dennis Tsichritzis: A Unified Approach to Functional Dependencies and Relations. SIGMOD Conference 1975: 237-245
[4]: Jean-Marc Cadiou: On Semantic Issues in the Relational Model of Data. MFCS 1976: 23-38
[5]: E. F. Codd: Further Normalization of the Data Base Relational Model. IBM Research Report, San Jose, California RJ909: (1971)
[6]: E. F. Codd: Recent Investigations in Relational Data Base Systems. IFIP Congress 1974: 1017-1021
[7]: Ronald Fagin: Multivalued Dependencies and a New Normal Form for Relational Databases. ACM Trans. Database Syst. 2(3): 262-278(1977)
[8]: ...
[9]: Jorma Rissanen: Independent Components of Relations. ACM Trans. Database Syst. 2(4): 317-325(1977)
[10]: Hans Albrecht Schmid, J. Richard Swenson: On the Semantics of the Relational Data Model. SIGMOD Conference 1975: 211-223
[11]: ...