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Functional Dependencies for Engineers

Functional dependencies define relationships between attributes in a database table. A functional dependency exists between attributes X and Y if each X value uniquely determines the corresponding Y value. For example, in a student table with attributes Student_ID, Name, and Age, Student_ID functionally determines Name and Age since each student's name and age are uniquely tied to their ID. Functional dependencies are important for database design as they indicate relationships between data that must be maintained.

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Enrique Gonzalez
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57 views3 pages

Functional Dependencies for Engineers

Functional dependencies define relationships between attributes in a database table. A functional dependency exists between attributes X and Y if each X value uniquely determines the corresponding Y value. For example, in a student table with attributes Student_ID, Name, and Age, Student_ID functionally determines Name and Age since each student's name and age are uniquely tied to their ID. Functional dependencies are important for database design as they indicate relationships between data that must be maintained.

Uploaded by

Enrique Gonzalez
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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26/7/23, 20:07 Intro to Functional Dependencies - Database Design Fundamentals for Software Engineers

Intro to Functional Dependencies


In this lesson, we will discuss the basic concepts of functional dependencies.

We'll cover the following

• Introduction
• Example

Introduction
One important theory developed for the entity relational (ER) model
involves the notion of functional dependency (FD). The aim of studying this
is to improve your understanding of relationships among data and to gain
enough formalism to assist with practical database design.

A functional dependency is a relationship between two attributes, typically


the primary key (PK) and other non-key attributes within a table. For any
relation R, attribute Y is functionally dependent on attribute X, if, for every
valid instance of X, that value of X uniquely determines the value of Y. This
relationship is indicated by the representation below :

X Y

determinant dependent

The left side of the above FD diagram is called the determinant, and the
right side is the dependent.

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26/7/23, 20:07 Intro to Functional Dependencies - Database Design Fundamentals for Software Engineers

Example
STUDENT relation

Student_Id Name Age


1 Spencer 22
2 Tony 20
3 Mark 23
4 Elyse 21

From the table above, it is obvious that Student_Id is the primary key as it is
unique for each student.

So, following the above definition for functional dependencies, we conclude


that:

Student_Id→Name,

Student_Id→Age,

Since we can determine both the name and age of the student through
his/her Student_Id.

In the next lesson, we will look at the rules of functional dependencies.

Back Next

Quiz! Rules of Functional De…

Completed

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