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Functional Dependency

• [email protected]

INFORMATICS DEPARTMENT – IT TELKOM

CS2343 – RELATIONAL DATABASE DESIGN
 Basic Concepts
• A constraint on the set of legal relations
to express facts about the enterprise for
modeling database.
• 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.
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CS2343 – RELATIONAL DATABASE DESIGN
 Concept (cont.)
• 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

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CS2343 – RELATIONAL DATABASE DESIGN
 Definition
• 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

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CS2343 – RELATIONAL DATABASE DESIGN
 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

INFORMATICS DEPARTMENT – IT TELKOM

CS2343 – RELATIONAL DATABASE DESIGN
 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  Z
• A1, A2, A3 form a sound and complete set of
inference rules

INFORMATICS DEPARTMENT – IT TELKOM

CS2343 – RELATIONAL DATABASE DESIGN
 Armstrong's Rules
1. Reflexivity Rule
– If X is a set of attributes and Y is a subset of X, then X
-> Y holds.
– Each subset of X is functionally dependent on X.
2. Augmentation Rule
– If X -> Y holds and W is a set of attributes, then WX ->
WY holds
– If Y is determined by X then a set of attributes W and Y
together will be determined by W and X together
3. Transitivity Rule
– If X -> Y and Y -> Z hold, then X -> Z holds
– If X functionally determines Y and Y functionally
determines Z then X functionally determines Z.

INFORMATICS DEPARTMENT – IT TELKOM

CS2343 – RELATIONAL DATABASE DESIGN
 Additional Useful Inference
Rules
1. Decomposition
– If X  YZ, then X  Y and X  Z
2. Union
– If X  Y and X  Z, then X  YZ
3. Psuedotransitivity
– If X  Y and WY  Z, then WX  Z

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CS2343 – RELATIONAL DATABASE DESIGN
 Closure (F+)
• The set of all functional dependencies that may
be logically derived from F
• For example, the student relation has the
following functional dependencies
– sno -> sname cno -> cname sno -> address cno ->
instructor instructor -> office

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CS2343 – RELATIONAL DATABASE DESIGN
 Closure Algorithms
1. Let X^c <- X
2. Let the next dependency be A -> B. If A
is in X^c and B is not, X^c <- X^c + B.
3. Continue step 2 until no new attributes
can be added to X^c.
• The result of the algorithm is X^c that is
equal to X+.

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CS2343 – RELATIONAL DATABASE DESIGN
 Closure Example (1)
• Consider the following relation
– student(sno, sname, cno, cname).
• Determine the closure of (sno, cno). We
have the following functional
dependencies.
– sno -> sname
– cno -> cname

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CS2343 – RELATIONAL DATABASE DESIGN
 Closure Example (2)
1. Step 1 --- X^c <- X, that is, X^c <- (sno, cno)
2. Step 2 --- Consider sno -> sname, since sno is in X^c
and sname is not, we have
X^c <- (sno, cno) + sname
3. Step 3 --- Consider cno -> cname, since cno is in
X^c and cname is not, we have
X^c <- (sno, cno, sname) + cname
4. Step 4 --- Again, consider sno -> sname but this
does not change X^c.
5. Step 5 --- Again, consider cno -> cname but this
does not change X^c.
• Therefore X+ = X^c = (sno, cno, sname, cname).

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CS2343 – RELATIONAL DATABASE DESIGN
 FD & Relationship
• Functional dependencies also arise in
relationships.
• Let C be the primary key of an entity and D be the
primary key of another entity.
• Let the two entities have a relationship.
• If the relationship is one-to-one:
– C -> D
– D -> C
• If the relationship is many-to-one:
– C -> D but not D -> C
• For many-to-many relationships, no functional
dependencies hold.
INFORMATICS DEPARTMENT – IT TELKOM
CS2343 – RELATIONAL DATABASE DESIGN
 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

INFORMATICS DEPARTMENT – IT TELKOM

CS2343 – RELATIONAL DATABASE DESIGN
 Example - 2
• C is student number and D is subject
number, there is no functional
dependency between them. If however,
we were storing marks and grades in the
database as well, we would have
– (student_number, subject_number) ->
marks
– marks -> grades

INFORMATICS DEPARTMENT – IT TELKOM

CS2343 – RELATIONAL DATABASE DESIGN
 Review
• The concept of functional dependency is related to the
concept of candidate key of a relation
• Therefore any subset X of the attributes of a relation R that
satisfies the property that all remaining attributes of the
relation are functionally dependent on it (that is, on X), then
X is candidate key as long as no attribute can be removed
from X and still satisfy the property of functional
dependence.
• Functional dependence is an important concept and a large
body of formal theory has been developed about it.
• Once a complete set of functional dependencies has been
obtained, we will study how these may be used to build
normalised relations.

INFORMATICS DEPARTMENT – IT TELKOM

CS2343 – RELATIONAL DATABASE DESIGN