§2 – The Relational Model and Normalization Fen Wang
[email protected] Lecture 4 IT468 DB @ ITAM 1 Chapter Objectives • The foundation of the relational model • Characteristics of relations • The basic relational terminology • Primary, candidate, and composite keys • The purpose and use of surrogate keys • How foreign keys represent relationships • The meaning of functional dependencies • Possible insertion, deletion, and update anomalies • Apply a process for normalizing relations IT468 DB @ ITAM 2 1 The Relational Database Model • The dominant database model is the relational database model – all current major DBMS products are based on it • Created by IBM engineer E. F. Codd in 1970 • It was based on mathematics called relational algebra • Now the standard model for commercial DBMS products IT468 DB @ ITAM 3 Important Relational Model Terms • Entity • Relation • Functional Dependency • Determinant • Candidate Key • Composite Key • Primary Key • Surrogate Key • Foreign Key • Referential integrity constraint • Normal Form • Multivalued Dependency IT468 DB @ ITAM 4 2 Entity • An entity is something of importance to a user that needs to be represented in a database: – Customers – Computers – Sales • An entity represents one theme or topic IT468 DB @ ITAM 5 Relation • Relational DBMS products store data about entities in relations, a special type of table • A relation is a two-dimensional table that has specific characteristics • The table dimensions, like a matrix, consist of rows and columns IT468 DB @ ITAM 6 3 Characteristics of a Relation