© 1986 by British Computer Society
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Recognizing Multivalued Dependencies in Relation Schemas*

Computer Science and Systems Branch, Naval Research Laboratory, Code 7590, Washington, D.C. 20375, USA
In the relation model of data, dependencies are used to decompose the initial relation schemas into smaller components. Whereas it is relatively easy to obtain an accurate set of functional dependencies (FDs), it is difficult to determine a correct set of multivalued dependencies (MVDs). MVDs depend on the context in which they are defined and thus are very hard to visualize. The purpose of this note is to give some results which may provide some insight regarding the existence of possible MVDs in the relation schemas provided all their FDs are known in advance.
Received January 1985.
* This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant no. IST-8503082.
Current address: Computer Science and Systems Branch, Naval Research Laboratory, code 7590, Washington, D.C. 20375, U.S.A.
¶ Department of Computer Science, 321 Math. Science Building, University of Missouri-Coloumbia, Coloumbia, Missouri 65211