Functional Dependencies for Semistructured Data

Extended functional dependencies; Path functional dependencies

Functional dependencies are used in relational database design to show that the value of a set of attributes depends on the value of another set of attributes. Theory has been developed to manipulate a set of functional dependencies to describe equivalences of sets of functional dependencies. Semi-structured data differs from relational data in two important ways: semi-structured data is hierarchical and the structure of the data is less consistent. Traditional functional dependencies do not capture these differences so new functional dependencies with associated theory has been defined for semi-structured data.

Functional dependencies for semi-structured data have been defined in the three recommended readings. While the syntax of functional dependencies defined over semi-structured data varies, the semantics is similar. In this article the syntax of Arenas and Libkin [1] is used but the...

Authors and Affiliations

1. University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

   Gillian Dobbie

2. National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

   Tok Wang Ling

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gillian Dobbie .

Editors and Affiliations

1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, GA, USA

   Ling Liu

2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, ON, Canada

   M. Tamer Özsu

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