Normal Forms for Multimedia Databases

In this chapter we present normal forms for the design of multimedia database schemes with reduced manipulation anomalies. To this aim we first discuss how to describe the semantics of multimedia attributes based upon the concept of generalized icons, already used in the modeling of multimedia languages. Then, we introduce new extended dependencies involving different types of multimedia data. Such dependencies are based on domain specific similarity measures that are used to detect semantic relationships between complex data types. Based upon these new dependencies, we have defined five normal forms for multimedia databases, some focusing on the level of segmentation of multimedia attributes, others on the level of fragmentation of tables. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61350-126-9.ch009