An analysis of multivalued and join dependencies based on the entity-relationship approach

Abstract

In this paper, we show that multivalued dependencies and join dependencies are not very viable for certain cases of relational database design; they are sometimes difficult to be identified; they are relation sensitive; and we are unable to talk about these types of dependencies without referring to some specific relation. We also show that the entity-relationship approach can be used for relational database design without any of the above mentioned undesirable properties of multivalued dependencies and join dependencies. © 1985.