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Join Dependency - JJ

Join dependency is a constraint on relations in a database scheme. A table is subject to a join dependency if it can be recreated by joining other tables with subsets of its attributes. Join dependencies play an important role in fifth normal form by restricting relations to a join on a given decomposition. While functional dependencies have a sound axiomatization, join dependencies do not have a complete axiomatization though implication is decidable.

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168 views

Join Dependency - JJ

Join dependency is a constraint on relations in a database scheme. A table is subject to a join dependency if it can be recreated by joining other tables with subsets of its attributes. Join dependencies play an important role in fifth normal form by restricting relations to a join on a given decomposition. While functional dependencies have a sound axiomatization, join dependencies do not have a complete axiomatization though implication is decidable.

Uploaded by

Nnadi Raphael
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Join dependency

In the area of computer science known as


dependency theory, a join dependency is a
constraint on the set of legal relations over
a database scheme. A table is subject
to a join dependency if can always be
recreated by joining multiple tables each
having a subset of the attributes of . If
one of the tables in the join has all the
attributes of the table , the join
dependency is called trivial.
The join dependency plays an important
role in the Fifth normal form, also known
as project-join normal form, because it can
be proven that if a scheme is
decomposed in tables to , the
decomposition will be a lossless-join
decomposition if the legal relations on
are restricted to a join dependency on
called .

Another way to describe a join dependency


is to say that the relationships in the join
dependency are independent of each
other.
Unlike in the case of functional
dependencies, there is no sound and
complete axiomatization for join
dependencies,[1] though axiomatization
exist for more expressive dependency
languages such as full typed
dependencies.[2]:Chapter 8 However,
implication of join dependencies is
decidable.[2]:Theorem 8.4.12

Formal definition
Let   be a relation schema and let
  be a decomposition of
  .
The relation   satisfies the join
dependency

  if
 

A join dependency is trivial if one of the  


is   itself.[3]

2-ary join dependencies are called


multivalued dependency as a historical
artifact of the fact that they were studied
before the general case. More specifically
if U is a set of attributes and R a relation
over it, then R satisfies   if and only
if R satisfies  
Example
Given a pizza-chain that models purchases
in table Customer = {order-number,
customer-name, pizza-name, courier}. The
following relations can be derived:

customer-name depends on order-


number
pizza-name depends on order-number
courier depends on order-number

Since the relationships are independent


there is a join dependency as follows: *
((order-number, customer-name), (order-
number, pizza-name), (order-
number,courier)).
If each customer has his own courier
however, there can be a join-dependency
like this: *((order-number, customer-name),
(order-number, pizza-name), (order-
number, courier), (customer-name,
courier)), but *((order-number, customer-
name, courier), (order-number, pizza-
name)) would be valid as well. This makes
it obvious that just having a join
dependency is not enough to normalize a
database scheme.

See also
Chase (algorithm)
Universal relation assumption
References
1. Petrov, S. V. (1989). "Finite axiomatization
of languages for representation of system
properties". Information Sciences. 47: 339–
372. doi:10.1016/0020-0255(89)90006-6 .
2. Abiteboul; Hull; Vianu. Foundations of
databases.
3. Silberschatz, Korth. Database System
Concepts (1st ed.).

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