Database Design and Relational Theory: Normal Forms and All That Jazz

© C. J. Date 2019

C. J. DateDatabase Design and Relational Theoryhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-5540-7_5

5. FDs and BCNF (Formal)

C. J. Date¹ 

(1)

Healdsburg, California, USA

 

What’s formal is normal

What’s not so is not

And if normal is formal,

Informal is what?

—Anon: Where Bugs Go

Now I want to step back, take a deep breath as it were, and consider FDs and BCNF all over again—but this time I want to do it properly (with apologies for the small amount of repetition involved). As you’ll quickly see, the treatment in this chapter is rather more abstract than that in the previous one; it shouldn’t be too difficult to follow, if you’re fully comfortable with the material of that previous chapter, but it’ll certainly be more formal. For that reason, ...