Lecture 6:

Schema refinement: Functional

dependencies

www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Teaching/current/Databases/
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 Recall: Database design
lifecycle
• Requirements analysis
– User needs; what must database do?
• Conceptual design
– High-level description; often using E/R model
• Logical design
– Translate E/R model into relational schema Next
• Schema refinement two
– Check schema for redundancies and anomalies lectures
• Physical design/tuning
– Consider typical workloads, and further optimise
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 Today’s lecture
• Why are some designs bad?
• What’s a functional dependency?
• What’s the theory of functional
dependencies?

• (Next lecture: How can we use this theory

to classify redundancy in relation design?)

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 Not all designs are equally
good
• Why is this design bad?
Data(sid,sname,address,cid,cname,grade)

• Why is this one preferable?

Student(sid,sname,address)
Course(cid,cname)
Enrolled(sid,cid,grade)

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 An instance of our bad
design

sid sname addres ci cname grade

s d
124 Britney USA 206 Database A++
204 Victoria Essex 202 Semantics C
124 Britney USA 201 S/Eng I A+
206 Emma London 206 Database B-
124 Britney USA 202 Semantics B+

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 Evils of redundancy
• Redundancy is the root of many problems associated
with relational schemas
– Redundant storage
– Update anomalies
– Insertion anomalies
– Deletion anomalies
– LOW TRANSACTION THROUGHPUT
• In general, with higher redundancy, if transactions are
correct (no anomalies), then they have to lock more objects
thus causing greater contention and lower throughput

• (Aside: Could having a dummy value, NULL, help?)

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 Decomposition
• We remove anomalies by replacing the schema
Data(sid,sname,address,cid,cname,grade)
with
Student(sid,sname,address)
Course(cid,cname)
Enrolled(sid,cid,grade)
• Note the implicit extra cost here
• Two immediate questions:
1. Do we need to decompose a relation?
2. What problems might result from a decomposition?

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 Functional dependencies
• Recall:
– A key is a set of fields where if a pair of tuples
agree on a key, they agree everywhere
• In our bad design, if two tuples agree on
sid, then they also agree on address,
even though the rest of the tuples may not
agree

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 Functional dependencies
cont.
• We can say that sid determines address
– We’ll write this
sid  address

• This is called a functional dependency

(FD)

• (Note: An FD is just another integrity

constraint)
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 Functional dependencies
cont.
• We’d expect the following functional
dependencies to hold in our Student database
– sid  sname,address
– cid  cname
– sid,cid  grade
• A functional dependency X  Y is simply a
pair of sets (of field names)
– Note: the sloppy notation A,B  C,D rather than
{A,B}  {C,D}

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 Formalities
• Given a relation R=R(A1:1, …, An:n), and X,
Y ({A1, …, An}), an instance r of R satisfies
XY, if
– For any two tuples t1, t2 in R, if t1.X=t2.X then
t1.Y=t2.Y

• Note: This is a semantic assertion. We can

not look at an instance to determine which
FDs hold (although we can tell if the instance
does not satisfy an FD!)
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 Properties of FDs
• Assume that X  Y and Y  Z are known to hold
in R. It’s clear that X  Z holds too.
• We shall say that an FD set F logically implies
X  Y, and write F [X  Y
– e.g. {X  Y, Y  Z} [ X  Z
• The closure of F is the set of all FDs logically
implied by F, i.e.
F+ @ {XY | F [ XY}
• The set F+ can be big, even if F is small 

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 Closure of a set of FDs
• Which of the following are in the closure of
our Student FDs?

– addressaddress
– cidcname
– cidcname,sname
– cid,sidcname,sname

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 Candidate keys and FDs
• If R=R(A1:1, …, An:n) with FDs F and
X{A1, …, An}, then X is a candidate key
for R if
– X  A1, …,An  F+
– For no proper subset YX is
Y  A1, …,An  F+

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 Armstrong’s axioms
• Reflexivity: If YX then F \ XY
– (This is called a trivial dependency)
– Example: sname,addressaddress
• Augmentation: If F \ XY then F
\ X,WY,W
– Example: As cidcname then
cid,sidcname,sid
• Transitivity: If F \ XY and F \ YZ then F \
XZ
– Example: As sid,cidcid and
cidcname, then sid,cidcname
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 Consequences of
Armstrong’s axioms
• Union: If F \ XY and F \ XZ then F
\ XY,Z
• Pseudo-transitivity: If F \ XY and
F \ W,YZ then F \ X,WZ
• Decomposition: If F \ XY and ZY then
F \ XZ

Exercise: Prove that these are consequences

of Armstrong’s axioms
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 Proof of Union Rule
Suppose that F \ XY and F \ XZ.
By augmentation we have
F \ XX,Y
since X U X = X. Also by augmentation
F \ X,YZ,Y
Therefore, by transitivity we have
F \ XZ,Y
QED
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 Functional Dependencies Can be
useful in Algebraic Reasoning

Suppose R(A,B,C) is a relation schema

with dependency AB, then

R =π A, B ( R ) π A ,C ( R )
A

(This is called Heath’s rule.)

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 Proof of Heath’s Rule
First show that

π A ,C ( R )
A
Suppose

then
and

Since

A
we have π A ,C ( R ) 19
 Proof of Heath’s Rule (cont.)
In the other direction, we must show that

A
Suppose Then there must exist records

and

There must also exist so that

But the functional dependency tells us that

Therefore, we have QED 20

 Equivalence
• Two sets of FDs, F and G, are said to be
equivalent if F+=G+
• For example:
{(A,BC), (AB)} and
{(AC), (AB)}
are equivalent
• F+ can be huge – we’d prefer to look for
small equivalent FD sets
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 Minimal cover
• An FD set, F, is said to be minimal if
1. Every FD in F is of the form XA, where A is
a single attribute
2. For no XA in F is F-{XA} equivalent to F
3. For no XA in F and ZX is
(F-{XA}){ZA} equivalent to F

1. For example, {(AC), (AB)} is a

minimal cover for {(A,BC), (AB)}
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 More on closures
• FACT: If F is an FD set, and XYF+ then
there exists an attribute AY such that
XAF+

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 Why Armstrong’s axioms?
• Soundness
– If F \ XY is deduced using the rules, then
XY is true in any relation in which the
dependencies of F are true

• Completeness
– If XY is is true in any relation in which the
dependencies of F are true, then F \ XY can
be deduced using the rules
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 Soundness
• Consider the Augmentation rule:
– We have XY, i.e. if t1.X=t2.X then t1.Y=t2.Y

– If in addition t1.W=t2.W then it is clear that t1.

(Y,W)=t2.(Y,W)

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 Soundness cont.
Consider the Transitivity rule:
– We have XY, i.e. if t1.X=t2.X then t1.Y=t2.Y
(*)
– We have YZ, i.e. if t1.Y=t2.Y then t1.Z=t2.Z
(**)
– Take two tuples s1 and s2 such that s1.X=s2.X
then from (*) s1.Y=s2.Y and then from (**)
s1.Z=s2.Z

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 Completeness
• Exercise
– (You may need the fact from slide 23)

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 Attribute closure

• If we want to check whether XY is in a closure of the

set F, could compute F+ and check – but expensive 
• Cheaper: We can instead compute the attribute
closure, X+, using the following algorithm:
closure:= X;
repeat until no change{
if UVF, where Uclosure
then closure:=closureV
};
• Then F \ XY iff Y is a subset of X+

Try this with sid,snamecname,grade 28

 Preview of next lecture:
Goals of normalisation
• Decide whether a relation is in “good form”
• If it is not, then we will “decompose” it into
a set of relations such that
– Each relation is in “good form”
– The decomposition has not lost any
information that was present in the original
relation
• The theory of this process and the notion
of “good form” is based on FDs
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 Summary
You should now understand:
• Redundancy and various forms of anomalies
• Functional dependencies
• Armstrong’s axioms

Next lecture: Schema refinement:

Normalisation
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