Normalisation

The theory of Relational Database Design

Introduction
Normalisation is a theory for designing relational schema that make sense and work well. Well-normalised tables avoid redundancy and thereby reduce inconsistencies. Redundancy is unnecessary duplication. In well-normalised DBs semantic dependencies are maintained by primary key uniqueness.

Goals of Normalisation
Eliminate certain kinds of redundancy avoid certain update anomalies good reresentation of real world simplify enforcement of DB integrity

Update anomalies
Undesirable side-effects that occur when performaing insertion, modification or deletion operations on badly designed relational DBs.
SSN 987 654 333 321 678 467 Name J Smith M Burke A Dolan K Doyle O ONeill R McKay Dept 1 2 1 1 3 2 DeptMgr Dept Name 321 467 ... 321 321 678 467

Representing Department info in the Employee table causes problems.

Sample anomalies
Modification when the manager of a dept changes we have to change many values. If we are not careful the DB will contain inconsistencies. There is no easy way to get the DB to ensure that a department has only one manager and only one name.

Anomalies continued
Deletion if O ONeill leaves we delete his tuple and lose
the fact that there is a department 3 the name of dept 3 who is the manager of dept. 3

Insertion
how would we create a new department before any employees are assigned to it ?

Better design
Separate entities are represented in separate tables.
SSN 987 654 333 321 678 467 Name J Smith M Burke A Dolan K Doyle O ONeill R McKay Dept 1 2 1 1 3 2 Dept 1 2 3 DeptMgr Dept Name 321 467 ... 678

Note that mapping from an ER model following the steps given will give a well-normalised DB.

Boyce-Codd Normal Form

After a lot of other approaches Boyce and Codd noticed a simple rule for ensuring tables are well-normalised. Tables which obey the rule are in BCNF (Boyce Codd Normal Form). BCNF rule: Every determinant in a table must be a candidate key for that table.

Determinants
A is a determinant of B if each value of A has precisely one (possibly null) associated value of B. Said another way A is a determinant of B if and only if whenever two tuples agree on their A value they agree on their B value.
A B

Determinants
Note that determinancy depends on semantics of data
cannot be decided from individual table occurences.

Alternative terminology
if A (functionally) determines B then B is (functionally) dependent on A

Example determinants
SSN determines employee name SSN determines employee department Dept. No. determines Dept. Name Dept. Name determines Dept. No.
assuming Dept. names are also unique

Emp. Name does not determine Emp. Dept

two John Smiths could be in difft. Depts.

Emp. Name does not determine SSN.

Determinancy Diagram
Name SSN Department Dept. Name

Dept. Mgr

In general key attributes of an entity determine all the single-valued attributes of the entity.

Composite Determinants
(SSN, Project#) together determine the hours that the employee works on the project. Suppose packsize of a part depends on the supplier.
Name SSN hours Project# PName

S# packsize

P#
PName

Superfluous Attrbiutes
Superfluous attributes
If SSN determines name, so does (SSN, Dept) and (SSN, Dept, salary), etc. Always remove superfluous attributes from determinants.

Transitive Dependencies
SSN actually determines DeptMgr but only because
DeptNo SSN

SSN determines DeptNo and DeptNo determines DeptMgr.

Be careful to remove transitive dependencies.

They mess up normalisation.

Dept. Mgr

Candidate keys
candidate key = any attribute or set of attributes which will be unique for a table (set of attributes).
As well as the primary key there may be other candidate keys. E.g. DNUMBER and DNAME are both candidate keys for the Department table.

Key = row identifier Candidate key = candidate identifier

Finding candidate keys

Every key is by definition a determinant of all other attributes in a relation.
So in a diagram, any attribute (or composite) from which all other attributes are reachable is a candidate key.
Name

(SSN, Project#) is a (composite) candidate key for a table containing these five attributes.

SSN hours Project# PName

What are the candidate keys ?

B E D F P Q R G V K L S M T N U W Z H X Y A B C subject D G H J student

teacher
E F

Problems occur when ...

Redundancy and anomalies occur when there are determinants which are not candidate keys. SSN Name
SSN is the only key for a table containing these attributes
all attributes are reachable from SSN. DeptNo Dept. Name

SSN, DeptNo and DeptName are determinants

they have arrows coming out of them.

Dept. Mgr

BCNF rule
In well-normalised relations (Boyce-Codd normal form) every determinant is a candidate key.
SSN Name DeptNo The employee/dept table decomposed to BCNF. Note that both DeptNo and DeptName are candidate keys of the second table. DeptNo Dept. Name

Dept. Mgr

Transformation to BCNF
Create new tables such that each non-key determinant is a candidate key in a new table. The new table contains the attributes which are directly determined by the new candidate key.
V V X W A B C Z A V W Y

V
W Z

X
Y A B C BCNF tables : (V, X) (A, B, C) (V, W, Z, A) (V, W, Y)

Other Normal Forms

First NF - no multi-valued attributes
all relational DBs are 1NF

2NF - every non-key attribute is fully dependent on the primary key G H J 3NF - eliminate functional is in 2NF dependencies between non-key Table but not 3NF attributes
all dependencies can then be enforced by uniqueness of keys.

BCNF vs. 3NF

BCNF goes further than 3NF, some say too far. A 3NF table that has no overlapping composite keys is in BCNF.
student subject 3NF, not BCNF keys: (student, subject) (student, teacher) teacher is a determinant teacher subject

A teacher teaches only one subject. For a given subject a given student has only one teacher. teacher student teacher

BCNF but tables are not independent

4NF : Multi-valued dependencies

If a course can have multiple teachers and multiple texts, blind mapping to 1NF will give
Subject Physics Physics Physics Physics Maths Maths Maths Teacher Green Brown Green Brown Green Green Green Text Basic Mechanis Basic Mechanics Principles of Optics Principles of Optics Basic Mechanics Vector Analysis Trigonometry

which clearly has redundancy.

Fully-normalised
BCNF relations are well-normalised Fully-normalised relations are those with no multi-valued dependencies (4NF) and no join dependencies (5NF).