Abstract
We introduce the notion of entropy for a set of attributes of a table in a relational database starting from the notion of entropy for finite functions. We examine the connections that exist between conditional entropies of attribute sets and lossy decompositions of tables and explore the properties of the entropy of sets of attributes regarded as an outer measure on the set of subsets of a heading of a table. Finally, we suggest a generalization of functional dependencies based on conditional entropy.
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© 2000 Springer-Verlag London Limited
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Simovici, D.A., Jaroszewicz, S. (2000). On Information-Theoretical Aspects of Relational Databases. In: Finite Versus Infinite. Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0751-4_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0751-4_20
Publisher Name: Springer, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-85233-251-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-0751-4
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