No label defined (Q4040907)

This book is a comprehensive, rigorous, introductory for beginners in (relational) database theory and practice. The first chapter introduces the concept of a database; the ``data modelling'' chapter presents a simplified version of the entity- attribute-relationship (EAR) paradigm. The core of the book consists of five chapters dedicated to the relational data model. Chapter 3 is an introduction to this model (described as a formal system composed of three parts: structural, behavioural and manipulative); fundamental concepts (such as relation, keys, domains, 1-NF, integrity constraints) are defined and very clearly illustrated; a conceptual mean of translating results from the EAR model to the relational one concludes this chapter. The concern of the fourth chapter is the relational algebra, while the relational calculus is presented in the sixth one; both of these chapters carefully address the problem of manipulating database objects by means of well-defined operations; classical definitions, concrete examples as well as excellent graphical toy- examples are used to present the relational algebra operations, while the relational calculus is given using BNF and, again, many representative examples. Chapter 5 deals with normalization; the functional, multivalued and join dependencies are described (both informally and in a rigorous manner) and their corresponding normal forms are defined. Other problems in dependency theory (representability, dependency closure, non-loss join decomposition) are formally presented in chapter 7. The final chapter gives a case study. We mention the outstanding tutorial features of the book (complete clarifications and examples - explanatory ones, solved problems and exercises with solutions -, etc.). We think this book is an ideal introduction to relational database design problems; it is easy to read, very accurate, selfcontained and (last but not least) a perfect didactic text.