Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!neat.cs.toronto.edu!vinay
Newsgroups: comp.databases
From: vinay@ai.toronto.edu ("Vinay K. Chaudhri")
Subject: Re: ER versus dependency normalization methods.
Message-ID: <90Dec6.154639est.6851@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
References: <33445@netnews.upenn.edu> <2095@ccadfa.adfa.oz.au> <1990Nov29.032532.23631@informix.com> <33684@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 6 Dec 90 20:47:25 GMT
Lines: 35

In article <33684@netnews.upenn.edu> aaron@grad1.cis.upenn.edu (Aaron Watters) writes:
>In article <1990Nov29.032532.23631@informix.com> randall@informix.com (Randall Rhea) writes:
>>
>> I have
>>a lot of respect for Codd, DeMarco et al., but in a real project, under
>>a real budget, a real computer, and real deadlines, you can't always follow 
>>them to the letter. 
>>Randall Rhea                                          Informix Software, Inc. 
>
>Issues of respect aside, how does one `follow' them at all?
>I still don't see how one extracts functional dependencies
>from the customer without getting the customer to draw something
>like an ER diagram first.  And once the ER-diagram is drawn,
>why bother with the notion of dependency based normalization
>at all?  I'm purposely adopting a strong position in the hopes
>of extracting a good example from someone (and maybe learning
>something).		-aaron.

I tried to achieve this during my masters thesis.  Ideas was to
design a dialog that can engage the user in a conversation and
as a result would infer the dependencies.  I came up with a prototype
which worked well in our initial experimentation.  We wanted to
to do more experimentation, fine tune it, and make it a marketable
product, but (sigh!) I moved to other research problems and ideas
were left there.  In case any one is interested the thesis is
available as Lecture Notes in Computer Science #402 authored by
T. P. Bagchi and myself (Vinay K. Chaudhri).


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Vinay K Chaudhri

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