CS1106: Lecture Session

Lecture 5.2: Boyce-Codd Normal Form

Friday 21 October 2011

The learning objectives of this lecture are: to explore in detail the problem that arise when our schema are poorly designed; to introduce the idea of a decomposition, i.e. breaking a relation schema (set of attributes) into two smaller problems; to introduce Boyce-Codd Normal Form (BCNF), a condition on a relation schema that eliminates these problems; and, to show how to ensure that we satisfy the BCNF condition by decomposing relation schema.

Slides: Available here in PDF format.

Please ask questions in class. If there is anything you don’t understand, ask. Make sure that you study the material from each lecture before attending the next.

If you feel you’re falling behind please be sure to meet with Dr. O’Sullivan as soon as possible.