The Implication Problem of Functional Dependencies in Complex-value Databases

Abstract

Modern applications increasingly require the storage of data beyond relational structure. The challenge of providing well-founded data models that can handle complex objects such as lists, sets, multisets, unions and references has not been met yet. The success of such data models will greatly depend on the existence of automated database design techniques that generalise achievements from relational database design. In this paper, a provably-correct and polynomial-time algorithm for deciding implication of functional dependencies in the presence of all combinations of records, lists, sets, and multisets is proposed. The notion of a functional dependency is based on a Brouwerian algebra of subattributes, yielding a complementary expressiveness.