Reasoning Methods for Designing and Surveying Relationships Described by Sets of Functional Constraints

Demetrovics, János, Molnár, András, and Thalheim, Bernhard. "Reasoning Methods for Designing and Surveying Relationships Described by Sets of Functional Constraints." Serdica Journal of Computing 3.2 (2009): 179-204. <http://eudml.org/doc/11447>.

@article{Demetrovics2009,
abstract = {This work is supported by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA), grant T042706.Current methods of database schema design are usually based on modeling the real world as entity (or object) classes with relationships among them. Properties of relationships can be described by semantical database constraints. One of them is functional dependency, which has a key role in traditional database design. The three basic types of binary relationships that can be described by functional dependencies are one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many. They can also be expressed by common graphical languages like the Entity-Relationship (ER) graph. However, relationships defined among more than two entity classes (ternary, quaternary, etc.) are usually not investigated and the common graphical tools lack expressive power regarding them. We show that the variety of relationship types is rich for higher arities and propose a simplified formalism for functional constraints as well as graphical and spreadsheet reasoning methods for handling sets of functional constraints that also help by relationship design.},
author = {Demetrovics, János, Molnár, András, Thalheim, Bernhard},
journal = {Serdica Journal of Computing},
keywords = {Database Schema; Functional Dependency; Entity-Relationship Model; Functional Constraint; Reasoning Method; database schema; functional dependency; entity-relationship model},
language = {eng},
number = {2},
pages = {179-204},
publisher = {Institute of Mathematics and Informatics Bulgarian Academy of Sciences},
title = {Reasoning Methods for Designing and Surveying Relationships Described by Sets of Functional Constraints},
url = {http://eudml.org/doc/11447},
volume = {3},
year = {2009},
}

TY - JOUR
AU - Demetrovics, János
AU - Molnár, András
AU - Thalheim, Bernhard
TI - Reasoning Methods for Designing and Surveying Relationships Described by Sets of Functional Constraints
JO - Serdica Journal of Computing
PY - 2009
PB - Institute of Mathematics and Informatics Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
VL - 3
IS - 2
SP - 179
EP - 204
AB - This work is supported by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA), grant T042706.Current methods of database schema design are usually based on modeling the real world as entity (or object) classes with relationships among them. Properties of relationships can be described by semantical database constraints. One of them is functional dependency, which has a key role in traditional database design. The three basic types of binary relationships that can be described by functional dependencies are one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many. They can also be expressed by common graphical languages like the Entity-Relationship (ER) graph. However, relationships defined among more than two entity classes (ternary, quaternary, etc.) are usually not investigated and the common graphical tools lack expressive power regarding them. We show that the variety of relationship types is rich for higher arities and propose a simplified formalism for functional constraints as well as graphical and spreadsheet reasoning methods for handling sets of functional constraints that also help by relationship design.
LA - eng
KW - Database Schema; Functional Dependency; Entity-Relationship Model; Functional Constraint; Reasoning Method; database schema; functional dependency; entity-relationship model
UR - http://eudml.org/doc/11447
ER -