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Incomplete Information

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

  • 59 Accesses

Synonyms

Indefinite information; Null values; Uncertain information

Definition

Incomplete information arises in relational databases, when a fact (tuple) has to be inserted in a relation, and values for some required columns are missing. For instance, in an employee database, the phone number of one employee might be missing, as might the address of another employee. There are numerous reasons for such missing information, e.g., the insertion was done through a view, or the incomplete tuple originated from another database that does not record these fields. In information integration and data exchange systems incomplete information is rampant. Note that here the null values only represent unknown, existing values. The other main case, namely the one that the column heading is not applicable to the tuple in question, is not covered here, for a treatment, see e.g., [17].

It is easy to storemissing or incomplete information, by simply using a symbol, say ⊥, different from the symbols of...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Gösta Grahne

Authors
  1. Gösta Grahne
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gösta Grahne .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. Tamer Ă–zsu

Section Editor information

  1. School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

    Leonid Libkin

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Grahne, G. (2018). Incomplete Information. In: Liu, L., Ă–zsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_1241

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