Induced Dependencies in Relational Databases†

With the growth of database complexity and size it is becoming increasingly necessary to automate the analysis of data. Part of this automation is the development of inductive algorithms to search for characterising rules. The paper introduces the formal concept of an induced dependency as a descriptor for the relationships which characterise the data within a database. This is done within the framework of known functional dependencies held in the schema. Two distinct ways of weakening the completeness of an induction are developed, in terms of which a two dimensional matrix of types of induced dependency is defined.