Appropriate reasoning about data dependencies in fixed and undetermined universes

  • Authors:
  • Joachim Biskup;Sebastian Link

  • Affiliations:
  • Fachbereich Informatik, Universität Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany;Information Science Research Centre, Massey University, New Zealand

  • Venue:
  • FoIKS'08 Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Foundations of information and knowledge systems
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

We study inference systems for the combined class of functional and full hierarchical dependencies in relational databases. Two notions of implication are considered: the original version in which the underlying set of attributes is fixed, and the alternative notion in which this set is left undetermined. The first main result establishes a finite axiomatisation in fixed universes which clarifies the role of the complementation rule in the combined setting. In fact, we identify inference systems that are appropriate in the following sense: full hierarchical dependencies can be inferred without use of the complementation rule at all or with a single application of the complementation rule at the final step of the inference; and functional dependencies can be inferred without any application of the complementation rule. The second main result establishes a finite axiomatisation for functional and full hierarchical dependencies in undetermined universes.