The Boyce-Codd-Heath Normal Form for SQL

  • Flavio Ferrarotti
  • Sven Hartmann
  • Henning Köhler
  • Sebastian Link
  • Millist Vincent
Conference paper
Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, volume 6642)

Abstract

In the relational model of data the Boyce-Codd-Heath normal form, commonly just known as Boyce-Codd normal form, guarantees the elimination of data redundancy in terms of functional dependencies. For efficient means of data processing the industry standard SQL permits partial data and duplicate rows of data to occur in database systems. Consequently, the combined class of uniqueness constraints and functional dependencies is more expressive than the class of functional dependencies itself. Hence, the Boyce-Codd-Heath normal form is not suitable for SQL databases. We characterize the associated implication problem of the combined class in the presence of NOT NULL constraints axiomatically, algorithmically and logically. Based on these results we are able to establish a suitable normal form for SQL.

Keywords

Normal Form Functional Dependency Inference Rule Uniqueness Constraint Relation Schema 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011

Authors and Affiliations

  • Flavio Ferrarotti
    • 1
  • Sven Hartmann
    • 2
  • Henning Köhler
    • 3
  • Sebastian Link
    • 1
  • Millist Vincent
    • 4
  1. 1.School of Information ManagementVictoria University of WellingtonNew Zealand
  2. 2.Institut für InformatikTechnische Universität ClausthalGermany
  3. 3.School of Information Technology & Electrical EngineeringUniversity of QueenslandAustralia
  4. 4.School of Computer and Information ScienceUniversity of South AustraliaAustralia

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