A GENERALIZATION OF FUNCTIONAL DEPENDENCIES IN RELATIONAL DATABASES AND USE OF BOOLEAN ALGEBRA

Abstract

Concept of p-dependency, a generalization of the notion of functional dependency, is introduced. It is established that every boolean function represents some p-dependency in relational database theory, in contrast to the situation with respect to functional dependency constraint. In the latter rase, it is to be noted that a functional dependency is represented by a boolean term having only one an complemented variable. A one-to-one correspondence between the set of boolean functions and the set of p-dependency constraints is shown. Functional dependency naturally turns out to be a special case of p-dependency.