paul c wrote:
> J M Davitt wrote:
>> ...
>> All the attributes in a relation comprise, at least, a superkey. The
>> set of attributes that qualify as a candidate key must hold unique
>> values and no subset of those attributes must hold unique values. The
>> only relations that could have empty candidate keys are those with
>> empty headings, right?
>
> [...] I thought a relation with any number of attributes could have
> only one value for them if it had an 'empty' set of candidate keys, eg.
> a relation that has only one tuple?
There is some confusion here on both parts, I think. Any relvar can have
an empty key, regardless of the number of attributes in the relvar. It
follows that such a relvar can have no other keys. A relvar has a set of
(candidate, if you will, but I consider that term meaningless) keys, in
general, but this set cannot be empty---there is always at least one key.
--
Jon
Received on Fri Jun 30 2006 - 03:08:46 CDT
