Database Decomposition into Fourth Normal Form

Summary: Introduces an unrestricted algorithm for decomposing schemas under functional and multivalued dependencies into lossless-join 4NF relations. Avoiding full dependency-closure computation, it runs in polynomial time for dependency classes broader than conflict-free sets. (summarized by gpt-5.6-luna on Jul 24 2026)

Paper ID: 7787
Venue: VLDB
Year: 1983
Pagerank: 6.798826e-05
Overall Rank: 4,259 | 70.79%
DOI: -

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Gösta Grahne (University of Helsinki)
2. Kari-Jouko Räihä (University of Helsinki)

BibTeX Citation

@article{grahne_vldb83,
        title = {{Database Decomposition into Fourth Normal Form}},
        author = {Grahne, Gösta and Räihä, Kari-Jouko},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '83},
        year = {1983}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 4 of 4 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
6,516	The Design of non-1NF Relational Databases into Nested Normal Form	1987	SIGMOD	5.8545649e-05
9,332	Unifying Functional and Multivalued Dependencies for Relational Database Design	1986	PODS	5.2887881e-05
13,170	Logical Design of Relational Database Schemes	1987	PODS	5.093636e-05
13,227	Dependency Characterizations For Acyclic Database Schemes	1984	PODS	5.093636e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 5 of 5 cited papers.

Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
540	Synthesizing Independent Database Schemas	1979	SIGMOD	0.0001686137
1,111	The U. R. Strikes Back	1982	PODS	0.00012131168
1,537	Assumptions in Relational Database Theory	1982	PODS	0.00010460647
2,529	REAL-WORLD MVD's	1981	SIGMOD	8.4604846e-05
3,504	Elimination of Intersection Anomalies from Database Schemes (Extended Abstract)	1983	PODS	7.3590322e-05

Semantically Similar Papers

#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	6,153	Independent and Separable Database Schemes	1983	PODS
2	13,250	Algebraic Aspects of Relational Database Decomposition (Extended Abstract)	1983	PODS
3	13,145	Decomposition of Relational Schemata into Components Defined by Both Projection and Restriction	1988	PODS
4	13,196	Alpha-Acyclic Decompositions of Relational Database Schemes	1986	PODS
5	3,222	Comprehensive Approach to the Design of Relational Database Schemes	1984	VLDB
6	6,698	Properties Of Database Schemata With Functional Dependencies	1984	PODS
7	6,516	The Design of non-1NF Relational Databases into Nested Normal Form	1987	SIGMOD
8	1,056	A Normal Form for Nested Relations	1985	PODS
9	9,332	Unifying Functional and Multivalued Dependencies for Relational Database Design	1986	PODS
10	13,170	Logical Design of Relational Database Schemes	1987	PODS