Ternary relationship decomposition strategies based on binary imposition rules

Abstract

We review a set of rules identifying which combinations of ternary and binary relationships can be combined simultaneously in semantically related situations. We investigate the effect of these rules on decomposing ternary relationships to simpler, multiple binary relationships. We also discuss the relevance of these decomposition strategies to ER modeling. We show that if at least one 1:1 or 1:M binary constraint can be identified within the construct of the ternary itself, then any ternary relationship can be decomposed to a binary format. From this methodology we construct a heuristic-the Constrained Ternary Decomposition (CTD) rule.<>