A Port Graph Rewriting Approach to Relational Database Modelling

Maribel Fernández (1) , Bruno Pinaud (2, 3) , Janos Varga (1)

1 Department of Informatics [King's College London]
2 LaBRI - Laboratoire Bordelais de Recherche en Informatique
3 UB - Université de Bordeaux

We present new algorithms to compute the Syntactic Closure and the Minimal Cover of a set of functional dependencies, using strategic port graph rewriting. We specify a Visual Domain Specific Language to model relational database schemata as port graphs, and provide an extension to port graph rewriting rules. Using these rules we implement strategies to compute a syntactic closure, analyse it and find minimal covers, essential for schema normalisation. The graph program provides a visual description of the computation steps coupled with analysis features not available in other approaches. We prove soundness and completeness of the computed closure. This methodology is implemented in PORGY.

Mots clés: graph transformation; relational databases; port graph; functional dependency; minimal cover; database design

Domaines: Base de données [cs.DB]; Théorie et langage formel [cs.FL]

Maribel Fernández, Bruno Pinaud, Janos Varga. A Port Graph Rewriting Approach to Relational Database Modelling. 29th International Symposium on Logic-based Program Synthesis and Transformation (LOPSTR 2019), Oct 2019, Porto, Portugal. pp.211-227, ⟨10.1007/978-3-030-45260-5_13⟩. ⟨hal-02316336⟩