Learning Minimal Covers of Functional Dependencies with Queries

Authors: Montserrat Hermo and Víctor Lavín.

Source: Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence Vol. 1720, 1999, 291 - 300.

Abstract. Functional dependencies play an important role in the design of databases. We study the learnability of the class of minimal covers of functional dependencies (MCFD) within the exact learning model via queries. We prove that neither equivalence queries alone nor membership queries alone suffice to learn the class. In contrast, we show that learning becomes feasible if both types of queries are allowed. We also give some properties concerning minimal covers.

©Copyright 1999 Springer-Verlag