BUS611: Data Management

There are a few types of attributes you need to be familiar with. Some of these are to be left as is, but some need to be adjusted to facilitate representation in the relational model. This first section will discuss the types of attributes. Later on we will discuss fixing the attributes to fit correctly into the relational model.

Simple attributes

Simple attributes are those drawn from the atomic value domains; they are also called single-valued attributes. In the COMPANY database, an example of this would be: Name = {John} ; Age = {23}

Composite attributes

Composite attributes are those that consist of a hierarchy of attributes. Using our database example, and shown in Figure 8.3, Address may consist of Number, Street and Suburb. So this would be written as → Address = {59 + 'Meek Street' + 'Kingsford'}

Figure 8.3. An example of composite attributes.

Multivalued attributes

Multivalued attributes are attributes that have a set of values for each entity. An example of a multivalued attribute from the COMPANY database, as seen in Figure 8.4, are the degrees of an employee: BSc, MIT, PhD.

Figure 8.4. Example of a multivalued attribute.

Derived attributes

Derived attributes are attributes that contain values calculated from other attributes. An example of this can be seen in Figure 8.5. Age can be derived from the attribute Birthdate. In this situation, Birthdate is called a stored attribute, which is physically saved to the database.

Figure 8.5. Example of a derived attribute.