Designing Globally Consistent Network Schemas

In this paper we address several problems relating to functional dependencies and network schemas. We investigate properties of the functional dependencies that are implicitly defined in a network schema. A definition for the satisfaction of functional dependencies by a network database is proposed, and then we give a sufficient condition for the global consistency of a network schema. A network schema is globally consistent if all its databases satisfy the functional dependencies that are implicitly defined in the schema. Finally, we describe a design methodology for producing a network schema whose set of implicitly defined functional dependencies implies a set of functional dependencies specified by the user.