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Chapter: Fundamentals of Database Systems : Database Design Theory and Normalization : Basics of Functional Dependencies and Normalization for Relational Databases

Normal Forms Based on Primary Keys

1. Normalization of Relations 2. Practical Use of Normal Forms 3. Definitions of Keys and Attributes Participating in Keys 4. First Normal Form 5. Second Normal Form 6. Third Normal Form

Normal Forms Based on Primary Keys

 

Having introduced functional dependencies, we are now ready to use them to specify some aspects of the semantics of relation schemas. We assume that a set of functional dependencies is given for each relation, and that each relation has a designated primary key; this information combined with the tests (conditions) for normal forms drives the normalization process for relational schema design. Most practical relational design projects take one of the following two approaches:

 

        Perform a conceptual schema design using a conceptual model such as ER or EER and map the conceptual design into a set of relations

 

        Design the relations based on external knowledge derived from an existing implementation of files or forms or reports

 

Following either of these approaches, it is then useful to evaluate the relations for goodness and decompose them further as needed to achieve higher normal forms, using the normalization theory presented in this chapter and the next. We focus in


this section on the first three normal forms for relation schemas and the intuition behind them, and discuss how they were developed historically. More general definitions of these normal forms, which take into account all candidate keys of a relation rather than just the primary key, are deferred to Section 15.4.

 

We start by informally discussing normal forms and the motivation behind their development, as well as reviewing some definitions from Chapter 3 that are needed here. Then we discuss the first normal form (1NF) in Section 15.3.4, and present the definitions of second normal form (2NF) and third normal form (3NF), which are based on primary keys, in Sections 15.3.5 and 15.3.6, respectively.

 

1. Normalization of Relations

 

The normalization process, as first proposed by Codd (1972a), takes a relation schema through a series of tests to certify whether it satisfies a certain normal form. The process, which proceeds in a top-down fashion by evaluating each relation against the criteria for normal forms and decomposing relations as necessary, can thus be considered as relational design by analysis. Initially, Codd proposed three normal forms, which he called first, second, and third normal form. A stronger definition of 3NF—called Boyce-Codd normal form (BCNF)—was proposed later by Boyce and Codd. All these normal forms are based on a single analytical tool: the functional dependencies among the attributes of a relation. Later, a fourth normal form (4NF) and a fifth normal form (5NF) were proposed, based on the concepts of multivalued dependencies and join dependencies, respectively; these are briefly dis-cussed in Sections 15.6 and 15.7.

 

Normalization of data can be considered a process of analyzing the given relation schemas based on their FDs and primary keys to achieve the desirable properties of

 

(1) minimizing redundancy and (2) minimizing the insertion, deletion, and update anomalies discussed in Section 15.1.2. It can be considered as a “filtering” or “purification” process to make the design have successively better quality. Unsatisfactory relation schemas that do not meet certain conditions—the normal form tests—are decomposed into smaller relation schemas that meet the tests and hence possess the desirable properties. Thus, the normalization procedure provides database designers with the following:

 

        A formal framework for analyzing relation schemas based on their keys and on the functional dependencies among their attributes

 

        A series of normal form tests that can be carried out on individual relation schemas so that the relational database can be normalized to any desired degree

 

Definition. The normal form of a relation refers to the highest normal form condition that it meets, and hence indicates the degree to which it has been normalized.

 

Normal forms, when considered in isolation from other factors, do not guarantee a good database design. It is generally not sufficient to check separately that each relation schema in the database is, say, in BCNF or 3NF. Rather, the process of normalization through decomposition must also confirm the existence of additional properties that the relational schemas, taken together, should possess. These would include two properties:

 

        The nonadditive join or lossless join property, which guarantees that the spurious tuple generation problem discussed in Section 15.1.4 does not occur with respect to the relation schemas created after decomposition.

 

        The dependency preservation property, which ensures that each functional dependency is represented in some individual relation resulting after decomposition.

 

The nonadditive join property is extremely critical and must be achieved at any cost, whereas the dependency preservation property, although desirable, is some-times sacrificed, as we discuss in Section 16.1.2. We defer the presentation of the for-mal concepts and techniques that guarantee the above two properties to Chapter 16.

 

2. Practical Use of Normal Forms

 

Most practical design projects acquire existing designs of databases from previous designs, designs in legacy models, or from existing files. Normalization is carried out in practice so that the resulting designs are of high quality and meet the desirable properties stated previously. Although several higher normal forms have been defined, such as the 4NF and 5NF that we discuss in Sections 15.6 and 15.7, the practical utility of these normal forms becomes questionable when the constraints on which they are based are rare, and hard to understand or to detect by the data-base designers and users who must discover these constraints. Thus, database design as practiced in industry today pays particular attention to normalization only up to 3NF, BCNF, or at most 4NF.

 

Another point worth noting is that the database designers need not normalize to the highest possible normal form. Relations may be left in a lower normalization status, such as 2NF, for performance reasons, such as those discussed at the end of Section 15.1.2. Doing so incurs the corresponding penalties of dealing with the anomalies.

 

Definition. Denormalization is the process of storing the join of higher nor-mal form relations as a base relation, which is in a lower normal form.

 

3. Definitions of Keys and Attributes Participating in Keys

 

Before proceeding further, let’s look again at the definitions of keys of a relation schema from Chapter 3.

 

Definition. A superkey of a relation schema R = {A1, A2, ... , An} is a set of attributes S R with the property that no two tuples t1 and t2 in any legal rela-tion state r of R will have t1[S] = t2[S]. A key K is a superkey with the additional property that removal of any attribute from K will cause K not to be a superkey any more.

The difference between a key and a superkey is that a key has to be minimal; that is,

if we have a key K = {A1, A2, ..., Ak} of R, then K – {Ai} is not a key of R for any Ai, 1 i k. In Figure 15.1, {Ssn} is a key for EMPLOYEE, whereas {Ssn}, {Ssn, Ename},

{Ssn, Ename, Bdate}, and any set of attributes that includes Ssn are all superkeys.

 

If a relation schema has more than one key, each is called a candidate key. One of the candidate keys is arbitrarily designated to be the primary key, and the others are called secondary keys. In a practical relational database, each relation schema must have a primary key. If no candidate key is known for a relation, the entire relation can be treated as a default superkey. In Figure 15.1, {Ssn} is the only candidate key for EMPLOYEE, so it is also the primary key.

 

Definition. An attribute of relation schema R is called a prime attribute of R if it is a member of some candidate key of R. An attribute is called nonprime if it is not a prime attribute—that is, if it is not a member of any candidate key.

 

In Figure 15.1, both Ssn and Pnumber are prime attributes of WORKS_ON, whereas other attributes of WORKS_ON are nonprime.

 

We now present the first three normal forms: 1NF, 2NF, and 3NF. These were pro-posed by Codd (1972a) as a sequence to achieve the desirable state of 3NF relations by progressing through the intermediate states of 1NF and 2NF if needed. As we shall see, 2NF and 3NF attack different problems. However, for historical reasons, it is customary to follow them in that sequence; hence, by definition a 3NF relation already satisfies 2NF.

 

4. First Normal Form

 

First normal form (1NF) is now considered to be part of the formal definition of a relation in the basic (flat) relational model; historically, it was defined to disallow multivalued attributes, composite attributes, and their combinations. It states that the domain of an attribute must include only atomic (simple, indivisible) values and that the value of any attribute in a tuple must be a single value from the domain of that attribute. Hence, 1NF disallows having a set of values, a tuple of values, or a combination of both as an attribute value for a single tuple. In other words, 1NF dis-allows relations within relations or relations as attribute values within tuples. The only attribute values permitted by 1NF are single atomic (or indivisible) values.

 

Consider the DEPARTMENT relation schema shown in Figure 15.1, whose primary key is Dnumber, and suppose that we extend it by including the Dlocations attribute as shown in Figure 15.9(a). We assume that each department can have a number of locations. The DEPARTMENT schema and a sample relation state are shown in Figure 15.9. As we can see, this is not in 1NF because Dlocations is not an atomic attribute, as illustrated by the first tuple in Figure 15.9(b). There are two ways we can look at the Dlocations attribute:

 

The domain of Dlocations contains atomic values, but some tuples can have a set of these values. In this case, Dlocations is not functionally dependent on the primary key Dnumber.


        The domain of Dlocations contains sets of values and hence is nonatomic. In this case, Dnumber Dlocations because each set is considered a single member of the attribute domain.

 

In either case, the DEPARTMENT relation in Figure 15.9 is not in 1NF; in fact, it does not even qualify as a relation according to our definition of relation in Section 3.1. There are three main techniques to achieve first normal form for such a relation:

 

1. Remove the attribute Dlocations that violates 1NF and place it in a separate relation DEPT_LOCATIONS along with the primary key Dnumber of DEPARTMENT. The primary key of this relation is the combination Dnumber, Dlocation}, as shown in Figure 15.2. A distinct tuple in DEPT_LOCATIONS exists for each location of a department. This decomposes the non-1NF relation into two 1NF relations.

        Expand the key so that there will be a separate tuple in the original DEPARTMENT relation for each location of a DEPARTMENT, as shown in Figure 15.9(c). In this case, the primary key becomes the combination {Dnumber, Dlocation}. This solution has the disadvantage of introducing redundancy in the relation.

 

        If a maximum number of values is known for the attribute—for example, if it is known that at most three locations can exist for a department—replace the Dlocations attribute by three atomic attributes: Dlocation1, Dlocation2, and Dlocation3. This solution has the disadvantage of introducing NULL values if most departments have fewer than three locations. It further introduces spurious semantics about the ordering among the location values that is not originally intended. Querying on this attribute becomes more difficult; for example, consider how you would write the query: List the departments that have ‘Bellaire’ as one of their locations in this design.

 

Of the three solutions above, the first is generally considered best because it does not suffer from redundancy and it is completely general, having no limit placed on a maximum number of values. In fact, if we choose the second solution, it will be decomposed further during subsequent normalization steps into the first solution.

 

First normal form also disallows multivalued attributes that are themselves composite. These are called nested relations because each tuple can have a relation within it. Figure 15.10 shows how the EMP_PROJ relation could appear if nesting is allowed. Each tuple represents an employee entity, and a relation PROJS(Pnumber, Hours) within each tuple represents the employee’s projects and the hours per week that employee works on each project. The schema of this EMP_PROJ relation can be represented as follows:

 

EMP_PROJ(Ssn, Ename, {PROJS(Pnumber, Hours)})

 

The set braces { } identify the attribute PROJS as multivalued, and we list the component attributes that form PROJS between parentheses ( ). Interestingly, recent trends for supporting complex objects (see Chapter 11) and XML data (see Chapter 12) attempt to allow and formalize nested relations within relational database systems, which were disallowed early on by 1NF.

 

Notice that Ssn is the primary key of the EMP_PROJ relation in Figures 15.10(a) and (b), while Pnumber is the partial key of the nested relation; that is, within each tuple, the nested relation must have unique values of Pnumber. To normalize this into 1NF, we remove the nested relation attributes into a new relation and propagate the primary key into it; the primary key of the new relation will combine the partial key with the primary key of the original relation. Decomposition and primary key propagation yield the schemas EMP_PROJ1 and EMP_PROJ2, as shown in Figure 15.10(c).

 

This procedure can be applied recursively to a relation with multiple-level nesting to unnest the relation into a set of 1NF relations. This is useful in converting an unnormalized relation schema with many levels of nesting into 1NF relations. The



existence of more than one multivalued attribute in one relation must be handled carefully. As an example, consider the following non-1NF relation:

 

PERSON (Ss#, {Car_lic#}, {Phone#})

 

This relation represents the fact that a person has multiple cars and multiple phones. If strategy 2 above is followed, it results in an all-key relation:

 

PERSON_IN_1NF (Ss#, Car_lic#, Phone#)

To avoid introducing any extraneous relationship between Car_lic# and Phone#, all possible combinations of values are represented for every Ss#, giving rise to redundancy. This leads to the problems handled by multivalued dependencies and 4NF, which we will discuss in Section 15.6. The right way to deal with the two multivalued attributes in PERSON shown previously is to decompose it into two separate relations, using strategy 1 discussed above: P1(Ss#, Car_lic#) and P2(Ss#, Phone#).

 

5. Second Normal Form

 

Second normal form (2NF) is based on the concept of full functional dependency. A functional dependency X Y is a full functional dependency if removal of any attribute A from X means that the dependency does not hold any more; that is, for any attribute A ε X, (X – {A}) does not functionally determine Y. A functional dependency X Y is a partial dependency if some attribute A ε X can be removed from X and the dependency still holds; that is, for some A ε X, (X – {A}) Y. In Figure 15.3(b), {Ssn, Pnumber} Hours is a full dependency (neither Ssn Hours nor Pnumber Hours holds). However, the dependency {Ssn, Pnumber} Ename is partial because Ssn Ename holds.

 

Definition. A relation schema R is in 2NF if every nonprime attribute A in R is fully functionally dependent on the primary key of R.

 

The test for 2NF involves testing for functional dependencies whose left-hand side attributes are part of the primary key. If the primary key contains a single attribute, the test need not be applied at all. The EMP_PROJ relation in Figure 15.3(b) is in 1NF but is not in 2NF. The nonprime attribute Ename violates 2NF because of FD2, as do the nonprime attributes Pname and Plocation because of FD3. The functional dependencies FD2 and FD3 make Ename, Pname, and Plocation partially dependent on the primary key {Ssn, Pnumber} of EMP_PROJ, thus violating the 2NF test.

 

If a relation schema is not in 2NF, it can be second normalized or 2NF normalized into a number of 2NF relations in which nonprime attributes are associated only with the part of the primary key on which they are fully functionally dependent. Therefore, the functional dependencies FD1, FD2, and FD3 in Figure 15.3(b) lead to the decomposition of EMP_PROJ into the three relation schemas EP1, EP2, and EP3 shown in Figure 15.11(a), each of which is in 2NF.

 

6. Third Normal Form

 

Third normal form (3NF) is based on the concept of transitive dependency. A functional dependency X Y in a relation schema R is a transitive dependency if there exists a set of attributes Z in R that is neither a candidate key nor a subset of any key of R,10 and both X Z and Z Y hold. The dependency Ssn Dmgr_ssn is transitive through Dnumber in EMP_DEPT in Figure 15.3(a), because both the dependencies Ssn Dnumber and Dnumber Dmgr_ssn hold and Dnumber is nei-ther a key itself nor a subset of the key of EMP_DEPT. Intuitively, we can see that the dependency of  Dmgr_ssn on Dnumber is undesirable in since  Dnumber is not a key of EMP_DEPT.

 

Definition. According to Codd’s original definition, a relation schema R is in 3NF if it satisfies 2NF and no nonprime attribute of R is transitively dependent on the primary key.

The relation schema EMP_DEPT in Figure 15.3(a) is in 2NF, since no partial depen-dencies on a key exist. However, EMP_DEPT is not in 3NF because of the transitive dependency of Dmgr_ssn (and also Dname) on Ssn via Dnumber. We can normalize EMP_DEPT by decomposing it into the two 3NF relation schemas ED1 and ED2 shown in Figure 15.11(b). Intuitively, we see that ED1 and ED2 represent independent entity facts about employees and departments. A NATURAL JOIN operation on ED1 and ED2 will recover the original relation EMP_DEPT without generating spurious tuples.

 

Intuitively, we can see that any functional dependency in which the left-hand side is part (a proper subset) of the primary key, or any functional dependency in which the left-hand side is a nonkey attribute, is a problematic FD. 2NF and 3NF normalization remove these problem FDs by decomposing the original relation into new relations. In terms of the normalization process, it is not necessary to remove the partial dependencies before the transitive dependencies, but historically, 3NF has been defined with the assumption that a relation is tested for 2NF first before it is tested for 3NF. Table 15.1 informally summarizes the three normal forms based on primary keys, the tests used in each case, and the corresponding remedy or normalization performed to achieve the normal form.


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