Functional Dependency (Normalization)

Asad Khailany, Dsc.

The concept of functional dependency (also known as normalization was

introduced by professor Codd in 1970 when he defined the first three normal
forms (first, second and third normal forms). Normalization is used to avoid or
eliminate the three types of anomalies (insertion, deletion and update
anomalies) which a database may suffer from. These concepts will be clarified
soon, but first let us define the first three normal forms.

First Normal Form: A relation is in first normal form if all its attributes are
simple. In other words, none of the attributes of the relation is a relation.
Notice that relation means 2-diemenatioanl table.

Example -1. Assume the following relation

Student-courses (Sid:pk, Sname, Phone, Courses-taken)

Where attribute Sid is the primary key, Sname is student name, Phone is
student's phone number and Courses-taken is a table contains course-id,
course-description, credit hours and grade for each course taken by the
student. More precise definition of table Course-taken is :

Course-taken (Course-id:pk, Course-description, Credit-hours, Grade)

According to the definition of first normal form relation Student-courses is not

in first normal form because one of its attribute Courses-taken is itself a table
and is not a simple attribute. To clarify it more assume the above tables
contain the data as shown below:

Student-courses

Sid Sname Phone Courses-taken

100 John 487 St-100-courses-
2454 taken
200 Smith 671 St-200-courses-
8120 taken
300 Russell 871 St-300-courses-
2356 taken

St-100-Course-taken

Course- Course-description Credit-hours Grade

id
 IS380 Database Concepts 3 A
IS416 Unix Operating 3 B
System

St-200-Course-taken

Course- Course-description Credit- Grade

id hours
IS380 Database Concepts 3 B
IS416 Unix Operating 3 B
System
IS420 Data Net Work 3 C

St-300-Course-taken

Course- Course-description Credit- Grade

id hours
IS417 System Analysis 3 A

Definition of the three types of anomalies:

Insertion anomaly means that that some data can not be inserted in the
database. For example we can not add a new course to the database of
example-1,unless we insert a student who has taken that course.

Update anomaly means we have data redundancy in the database and to make
any modification we have to change all copies of the redundant data or else the
database will contain incorrect data. For example in our database we have the
Course description "Database Concepts" for IS380 appears in both St-100-
Course-taken and St-200-Course-taken tables. To change its description to
"New Database Concepts" we have to change it in all places. Indeed one of the
purposes of normalization is to eliminate data redundancy in the database.

Deletion anomaly means deleting some data cause other information to be lost.
For example if student Russell is deleted from St-100-Course-taken table we
also lose the information that we had a course call IS417 with description
System Analysis.

Thus Student-courses table suffers from all the three anomalies.

To convert the above structure to first normal form relations, all non-simple
attributes must be removed or converted to simple attribute. To do that a new
relation is created by combining each row of Student-courses with all rows of
its corresponding course table that was taken by that specific student.
Following is Student-courses table in first normal form.

Student-courses ( Sid:pk1, Sname, Phone, Course-id:pk2,

Course-description, Credit-hours, Grade)

Notice that the primary key of this table is a composite key made up of two
parts; Sid and Course-id. Note that pk1 following an attribute indicates that
the attribute is the first part of the primary key and pk2 indicates that the
attribute is the second part of the primary key.

Student-courses

Sid Sname Phone Course- Course- Credit- Grade

id description hours
10 John 487 IS380 Database 3 A
0 2454 Concepts
10 John 487 IS416 Unix Operating 3 B
0 2454 System
20 Smith 671 IS380 Database 3 B
0 8120 Concepts
20 Smith 671 IS416 Unix Operating 3 B
0 8120 System
20 Smith 671 IS420 Data Net Work 3 C
0 8120
30 Russell 871 IS417 System Analysis 3 A
0 2356

Examination of the above Student-courses relation reveals that Sid does not
uniquely identify a row (tuple) in the relation hence cannot be the primary key.
For the same reason Course-id cannot be the primary key. However the
combination of Sid and Course-id uniquely identifies a row in Student-courses,
Therefore (Sid, Course-id) is the primary key of the above relation.

The primary key determines every attribute. For example if you know both Sid
and Course-id for any student you will be able to retrieve Sname, Phone,
Course-description, Credit-hours and Grade, because these attributes are
dependent on the primary key. Figure 1 below is the graphical representation
of the functional dependency between the primary key and attributes of the
above relation.

 
Note that the attribute to the right of the arrow is functionally dependent on
the attribute in the left of the arrow. Thus the combination (Sid, Course-id) is
the determinant (that determines other attributes) and attributes Sname,
Phone, Course-description, Credit-hours and Grade are dependent attributes.
Formally speaking a determinant is an attribute or a group of attributes
determine the value of other attributes. In addition to the (Sid, Course-id) there
are two other determinants in the above Student-courses relation. These are;
Sid and Course-id attributes. Note that Sid alone determines both Sname and
Phone, and attribute Course-id alone determines both Credit-hours and
Course_description attributes.

Attribute Grade is fully functionally dependent on the primary key (Sid,

Course-id) because both parts of the primary keys are needed to determine
Grade. On the other hand both Sname, and Phone attributes are not fully
functionally dependent on the primary key, because only a part of the primary
key namely Sid is needed to determine both Sname and Phone. Also attributes
Credit-hours and Course-Description are not fully functionally dependent on
the primary key because only Course-id is needed to determine their values.

The new relation Student-courses still suffers from all three anomalies for the
following reasons:

1.     The relation contains redundant data (Note Database_Concepts

as the course

description for IS380 appears in more than one place).

2.     The relation contains information about two entities Student and
course.

Following is the detail description of the anomalies that relation Student-

courses suffers from.

1.     Insertion anomaly: We cannot add a new course such as IS247 with
course description programming techniques to the database unless we
add a student who to take the course.

2.     Update anomaly: If we change the course description for IS380 from
Database Concepts to New_Database_Concepts we have to make changes
in more than one place or else the database will be inconsistent. In other
words in some places the course description will be
New_Database_Concepts and in any place were we forgot to make the
changes the description still will be Database_Concepts.

3.     Deletion anomaly: If student Russell is deleted from the database we

also loose information that we had on course IS417 with description
System_Analysis.
The above discussion indicates that having a single table Student-courses for
our database causing problems (anomalies). Therefore we break the table to
smaller table to get a higher normal form relation. Before doing that let us
define the second normal form.

Second normal relation: A first normal form relation is in second normal form if
all its non-primary attributes are fully functionally dependent on the primary
key.

Note that primary attributes are those attributes, which are parts of the
primary key, and non-primary attributes do not participate in the primary key.
In Student-courses relation both Sid and Course-id are primary attributes
because they are components of the primary key. However attributes Sname,
Phone, Course-description, Credit-hours and Grade all are non primary
attributes because non of them is a component of the primary key.

To convert Student-courses to second normal relations we have to make all

non-primary attributes to be fully functionally dependent on the primary key.
To do that we need to project (that is we break it down to two or more relations)
Student-courses table into two or more tables. However projections may cause
problems. To avoid such problems it is important to keep attributes, which are
dependent on each other in the same table, when a relation is projected to
smaller relations. Following this principle and examination of Figure-1 indicate
that we should divide Student-courses relation into following three relations:

PROJECT Student-courses ON (Sid, Sname, Phone) creates a table call it

Student. The relation Student will be Student (Sid:pk, Sname, Phone) and

PROJECT Student-courses ON (Sid, Course-id, Grade) creates a table call it

Student-grade. The relation Student-grade will be

Student-grade (Sid:pk1:fk:Student, Course-id::pk2:fk:Courses, Grade) and

Projects Student-courses ON (Course-id, Course-Description, Credit-hours)

create a table call it Courses. Following are these three relations and their
contents:

Student (Sid:pk, Sname, Phone)

Sid Sname Phone

100 John 487
2454
200 Smith 671
 8120
300 Russell 871
2356

Courses (Course-id::pk, Course-Description)

Course- Course-description Credit-hours

id
IS380 Database Concepts 3
IS416 Unix Operating System 3
IS420 Data Net Work 3
IS417 System Analysis 3

Student-grade (Sid:pk1:fk:Student, Course-id::pk2:fk:Courses, Grade)

Sid Course-id Grade

100 IS380 A
100 IS416 B
200 IS380 B
200 IS416 B
200 IS420 C
300 IS417 A

All these three relations are in second normal form. Examination of these
relations shows that we have eliminated the redundancy in the database. Now
relation Student contains information only related to the entity student,
relation Courses contains information related to entity Courses only, and the
relation Student-grade contains information related to the relationship between
these two entity.

Further these three sets are free from all anomalies. Let us clarify this in more
detail.
Insertion anomaly: Now a new Course with course-id IS247 and Course-
description can be inserted to the table Course. Equally we can add any new
students to the database by adding their id, name and phone to Student table.
Therefore our database, which made up of these three tables does not suffer
from insertion anomaly.

Update anomaly: Since redundancy of the data was eliminated no update

anomaly can occur. To change the course-description for IS380 only one
change is needed in table Courses.

Deletion anomaly: the deletion of student Russell from the database is achieved
by deleting Russell's records from both Student and Student-grade relations
and this does not have any side effect because the course IS417 untouched in
the table Courses.

Third Normal Form: A second normal form relation is in third normal form if all
non-primary attributes (that is attributes that are not parts of the primary key
or of any candidate key) have non-transitivity dependency on the primary key.

Assume the relation:

STUDENT (Sid: pk, Activity, fee)

Further Activity ------------> fee that is the Activity determine the fee

Sid Activity Fee

100 Swimming 100
200 Tennis 100
300 Golf 300
400 Swimming 100

Table STUDENT is in first normal form because all its attributes are simple.
Also STUDENT is in second normal form because all its non-primary attributes
are fully functionally dependent on the primary key (Sid). Notice that a first
normal relation with non-composite (that is simple) primary key automatically
will be in second normal form because all its non-primary attributes will be
fully functionally dependent on the primary key.

Table STUDENT suffers from all 3 anomalies; a new student can not be added
to the database unless he/she takes an activity and no activity can be inserted
into the database unless we get a student to take that activity. There is
redundancy in the table (see Swimming), therefore to change the fee for
Swimming we must make changes in more than one place and that will cause
update anomaly problem. If student 300 is deleted from the table we also loose
the fact that we had Golf activity with its fee to be 300. To overcome these
anomalies STUDENT table should be converted to smaller tables. Consider the
following three projection of the STUDENT relation:

PROJECT STUDENT on [Sid, Activity] and we get a relation name it

STUD-AVT (Sid:pk, Activity) with the following data :

STUD_ACT

Sid Activity
100 Swimming
200 Tennis
300 Golf
400 Swimming

 
PROJECT STUDENT on [Activity, Fee] and we get a relation name AVT-Fee
(Activity:pk, Fee) with the following data :

AVT-Fee

Activity Fee
Swimming 100
Tennis 100
Golf 300
Swimming 100

PROJECT STUDENT on [Sid, Fee] and we get a relation name

Sid-Fee (Sid:pk, Fee) with the following data :

Sid-Fee

Sid Fee
100 100
200 100
300 300
400 100

The question is which pairs of these projections should we choose? The answer
to that is to choose the pair STUD-AVT and AVT-Fee because the join of these
two projections produces the original STUDENT table. Such projections are
called non-loss projections. Therefore the join of STUD-AVT and AVT-Fee on
the common attribute Activity recreate the original STUDENT table. On the
other hand as shown below the join of projections Sid-Fee and AVT-Fee on
their common attribute Sid generates erroneous data that were not in the
original STUDENT table and such projections are called loss projections.
Following is the join of projections Sid-Fee and AVT-Fee on their common
attribute Sid
 

Sid Activity Fee

100 Swimming 100
100 Tennis 100
200 Tennis 100
200 Swimming 100
300 Golf 300
400 Swimming 100
400 Tennis 100

The three rows marked in red color were not in the original STUDENT table.
Thus we have an erroneous data in the database.

Both projections STUD-AVT and AVT-Fee are in third normal form and they do
not suffer from any anomalies.

Boyce Codd normal (BOC): A relation is in BOC form if every determinant is a

candidate key. This is an improved form of third normal form.

Fourth Normal Form: A Boyce Codd normal form relation is in fourth normal
form if there is no multi value dependency in the relation or there are multi
value dependency but the attributes, which are multi value dependent on a
specific attribute, are dependent between themselves. This is best discussed
through mathematical notation. Assume the following relation

R(a:pk1, b:pk2, c:pk3)

Recall that a relation is in BOC normal form if all its determinant are candidate
keys, in other words each determinant can be used as a primary key. Because
relation R has only one determinant (a, b, c),, which is the composite primary,
key and since the primary is a candidate key therefore R is in BOC normal
form.

Now R may or may not be in fourth normal form.

 
1. If R contains no multi value dependency then R will be in Fourth normal
form.
 

2. Assume R has the following two-multi value dependencies:

a ------->> b and a ---------->> c

In this case R will be in the fourth normal form if b and c dependent on each
other. However if b and c are independent of each other then R is not in fourth
normal form and the relation has to be projected to following two non-loss
projections. These non-loss projections will be in fourth normal form.

Example:

Case 1:

Assume the following relation:

Employee (Eid:pk1, Language:pk2, Skill:pk3)

No multi value dependency, therefore R is in fourth normal form.

case 2:

Assume the following relation with multi-value dependency:

Employee (Eid:pk1, Languages:pk2, Skills:pk3)

Eid ---->> Languages Eid ------>> Skills

Languages and Skills are dependent.

This says an employee speak several languages and has several skills. However
for each skill a specific language is used when that skill is practiced.

Eid Language Skill

100 English Teaching
100 Kurdish Politic
100 French cooking
200 English cooking
200 Arabic Singing

Thus employee 100 when he/she teaches speaks English but when he cooks
speaks French. This relation is in fourth normal form and does not suffer from
any anomalies.
case 3:

Assume the following relation with multi-value dependency:

Employee (Eid:pk1, Languages:pk2, Skills:pk3)

Eid ---->> Languages Eid ------>> Skills

Languages and Skills are independent.

Eid Language Skill

100 English Teaching
100 Kurdish Politic
100 English politic
100 Kurdish Teaching
200 Arabic Singing
     

This relation is not in fourth normal form and suffers from all three types of
anomalies.

Insertion anomaly: To insert row (200 English Cooking) we have to insert two
extra rows (200 Arabic cooking), and (200 English Singing) otherwise the
database will be inconsistent. Note the table will be as follow:

Eid Language Skill

100 English Teaching
100 Kurdish Politic
100 English politic
100 Kurdish Teaching
200 Arabic Singing
200 English Cooking
200 Arabic Cooking
 200 English Singing

Deletion anomaly: If employee 100 discontinue politic skill we have to delete

two rows

(100 Kurdish Politic), and (100 English Politic) otherwise the database will be
inconsistent.

Update anomaly: If employee 200 changes his skill from singing to dancing we
have to make changes in more than one place

The relation is projected to the following two non-loss projections which are in
forth normal form

Emplyee_Language(Eid:pk1, Languages:pk2)

Eid Language
100 English
100 Kurdish
200 Arabic

Emplyee_Language(Eid:pk1, Skills:pk2)

Eid Skill
100 Teaching
100 Politic
200 Singing