When do non-conflict-free multivalued dependency sets appear? (Q794181)

In database theory, various data dependencies have been studied. Functional dependencies (FDs) and multivalued dependencies (MVDs) are well-known data dependencies. However, it is known that some sets of MVDs have some unusual meanings in the real world, and that a class of sets of MVDs, called conflict-free, does not have those unusual meanings. This paper shows that, even if relations having only FDs as integrity constraints are considered, once a relation is produced by taking the union and the Cartesian product of those relations, any set consisting of FDs and MVDs can appear as integrity constraints of the relation. The union and the Cartesian product of relations play an important role in various cases, for example, in the process of query processing, view definition, or integration of distributed databases. Hence, this result implies that, even if a database is composed of relations having FDs as integrity constraints, it is necessary to consider relations satisfying not only a conflict-free dependency set but also any set of FDs and MVDs.