Hi there,

I'm having some trouble identifying transitive dependencies in the student
table below

StudId Name CourseCode CourseDesc Lecturer Grade Office
'S1234', 'Jack', 'C224', 'Database', 'Codd', 'D', 381
'S1234', 'Jack', 'C225', 'Algorithms', 'Djikstra', 'P', 380
'S2345', 'Jill', 'C224', 'Database', 'Codd', 'HD', 381
'S2345', 'Jill', 'C226', 'Architecture', 'Ritchie', 'HD', 390
'S4567', 'Jack', 'C226', 'Architecture', 'Ritchie', 'D', 390
'S4567', 'Jack', 'C224', 'Database', 'Codd', 'F', 381
'S9872', 'Howard', 'Cpol', 'Politics', 'Marx', 'F', 380

I've first tried to find the functional dependencies (they may or may not be
correct)

* StudId -> Name
* (StudId, CourseCode) -> Name, CourseDesc, Lecturer, Grade, Office
* CourseCode -> CourseDesc, Lecturer, Office
* CourseDesc -> CourseCode, Lecturer, Office
* Lecturer -> CourseCode, CourseDesc, Office

I then thought that (StudId, CourseCode) -> Office, CourseDesc, Lecturer
might be a transitive dependency within student. Is it?

Are you providing ALL of the (correct?) information given in the assignment?
It is unusual in assignments that that there is not > 1 lecturer per
course_desc or course_code.


"David" <auto90059 (AT) hushmail (DOT) com> wrote

David wrote:
As Alan already pointed out, it is a bit unlikely that every lecturere
gives at most one course. Your list is also a bit redundant, but that
doesn't make it incorrect.

In order to know that you have to determine if (StudId, CourseCode) is a
candidate key or not. (They did give you definition of what a transitive
dependency is, didn't they?) Is it?

-- Jan Hidders