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

What makes this book different from others on database design? Many resources on design practice do little to explain the underlying theory, and books on design theory are aimed primarily at theoreticians. In this book, renowned expert Chris Date bridges the gap by introducing design theory in ways practitioners can understand—drawing on lessons learned over four decades of experience to demonstrate why proper database design is so critical in the first place.

Every chapter includes a set of exercises that show how to apply the theoretical ideas in practice, provide additional information, or ask you to prove some simple theoretical result. If you’re a database professional familiar with the relational model, and have more than a passing interest in database design, this book is for you.

Questions this book answers include:

• Why is Heath’s Theorem so important?
• What is The Principle of Orthogonal Design?
• What makes some JDs reducible and others irreducible?
• Why does dependency preservation matter?
• Should data redundancy always be avoided? Can it be?

Databases often stay in production for decades, and careful design is critical for avoiding subtle errors and processing problems over time. If they’re badly designed, the negative impacts can be incredibly widespread. This gentle introduction shows you how to use important theoretical results to create good database designs.

Table of Contents

Part I: Setting the Scene
Chapter 1: Preliminaries
Chapter 2: Prerequisites

Part II: Functional Dependencies, Boyce/Codd Normal Form, and Related Matters
Chapter 3: Normalization: Some Generalities
Chapter 4: FDs and BCNF (Informal)
Chapter 5: FDs and BCNF (Formal)
Chapter 6: Preserving FDs
Chapter 7: FD Axiomatization
Chapter 8: Denormalization

Part III: Join Dependencies, Fifth Normal Form, and Related Matters
Chapter 9: JDs and 5NF (Informal)
Chapter 10: JDs and 5NF (Formal)
Chapter 11: Implicit Dependencies
Chapter 12: MVDs and 4NF
Chapter 13: Additional Normal Forms

Part IV: Orthogonality
Chapter 14: The Principle of Orthogonal Design

Part V: Redundancy
Chapter 15: We Need More Science

Appendix A: Primary Keys Are Nice but Not Essential
Appendix B: Redundancy Revisited
Appendix C: Historical Notes
Appendix D: Answers to Exercises