Re: Principle of Orthogonal Design

On 28 jan, 15:29, "Brian Selzer" <br..._at_selzer-software.com> wrote:
> "Jan Hidders" <hidd..._at_gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:0a872b75-448e-4131-ba5b-6bcee88da815_at_e10g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
>
>
>
> > On 28 jan, 02:12, mAsterdam <mAster..._at_vrijdag.org> wrote:
> >> Jan Hidders wrote:
> >> > mAsterdam wrote something very much like:
> >> >> Pragmatical redefinitions must be temporary and tracked.
> >> > Sure, we agree on that.
>
> >> <unsnip>
>
> >> Wether the relation between heading and tuples goes
> >> via names or ordering is relevant or not.
>
> >> If it is not I want it out of scope.
>
> >> </unsnip>
>
> > I don't think that it is possible to get it out of scope. If you think
> > it is, then by all means provide an equivalent and complete definition
> > where it is. I'm also not sure what your problem exactly is. We have a
> > definition that works for the named perspective, which is arguably the
> > most appropriate for the relational model anyway, so can we now
> > please, please, please, pretty please, move on with the discussion?
>
> I don't think the definition is sufficient even for the named perspective:

Certainly. I think I already said earlier that there is a stronger version that removes even more redundancy. But I wanted to wait a little until mAsterdam had gotten his head around the current one.

> consider
>
> R1 {J, K}
>     KEY {J}
>     KEY {K}
>
> R2 {J, A}
>     KEY {J}
>     FOREIGN KEY {J} REFERENCES R1
>
> R3 {K, A}
>     KEY {K}
>     FOREIGN KEY {K} REFERENCES R1
>
> Supposing that J, K and A have different types and discounting any meaning
> attributed by relation names, there is overlap between R2 and R3.
>
> J and K are both keys for R1, so J --> K and K --> J.
>
> And due to the foreign keys between R2 and R1 and R3 and R1:
>
> from J --> K and K --> A, J --> A can be inferred;
> from K --> J and J --> A, K --> A can be inferred.

You can reason like that about FDs in the context of a single relation, but you seem to do it here at schema level. What exactly does it mean that J --> K holds at schema level? The only way I can make sense of your statements is if you are working under the universal relation assumption. Are you? Or are you perhaps assuming a few extra dependencies you haven't told us about? Dependencies like (R1 NJN R2)[K,A] = R3?
> So, if there are tuples {j1, k1} in R1, {j1, a1} in R2, and {k1, a2} in R3,
> the database is inconsistent due in my opinion to a POOD violation.
>
> I think, therefore, that you need to adjust your definitions to reflect the
> interactions between inclusion dependencies and functional dependencies.  I
> think the closure of F union I is applicable here, where F is the set of all
> functional dependencies and I is the set of all inclusion dependencies.

That was actually already implicit in my definitions. If I say "there is a dependency" it means that either it is specified explicitly or logically follows from those that are. But that doesn't really solve the problem you identified. For that you need the following redefinition of the POOD rule:

DEFINITION: A schema is said to violate POOD if there is a query Q over that schema resulting in a relation with header H and in the schema a relation R with a minimal join dependency with component C such that there is a non-trivial ID Q[H] --> R[C].

To keep this practical Q should probably be restricted to conjunctive queries, but in theory it could be any query.

• Jan Hidders