Abstract:

This paper develops the database design methodology proposed in [19] which is based on the graphical representation of dependencies among database attributes. Rooted in the papers of Bernstein, Smith, Mannila and Raiha, Ausiello, D’Atri and Sacca, the methodology lacks the formalistic bedrock so abundant in normalization papers. It is intentionally less rigorous but more relevant to the database designers. Some issues presented in [19] are deepened: adding new attributes, surrogate keys, and removing symmetric dependencies. Others are completely new, such as: fixing functional dependencies problems using inclusion dependencies, altering the dependencies graph in order to achieve Boyce-Codd Normal Form, and transforming Multi-Valued Dependencies into Functional Dependencies.