Inclusion dependency determination in a large database for establishing primary key-foreign key relationships

摘要

A method and an inclusion dependency determination system (IDDS) for determining inclusion dependency between columns of tables in a target database to establish primary key (PK)-foreign key (FK) relationships among data in the columns with minimized disk input and output operations are provided. The IDDS determines dependency characteristic data (DCD) of each column and arranges the columns by applying one or more predefined rules to the columns based on a minimum value of the data of each column. The IDDS determines pairs of arranged columns that demonstrate a possibility of inclusion dependency based on the DCD and identifies a first column and a second column of each determined pair as a candidate PK and a candidate FK respectively. The IDDS determines inclusion dependency between the candidate PK and the candidate FK on comparing data of the candidate PK with the data of the candidate FK using dynamically determined search techniques.