What is Second Normal Form?
For a table to be in the Second Normal Form, it must satisfy two
conditions:
1. The table should be in the First Normal Form.
2. There should be no Partial Dependency.
What is Partial Dependency? Do not worry about it. First let's
understand what is Dependency in a table?
What is Dependency?
Let's take an example of a Student table with columns student_id,
name, reg_no(registration number), branch and address(student's home
address).
student_id name reg_no branch address
In this table, student_id is the primary key and will be unique for
every row, hence we can use student_id to fetch any row of data
from this table
Even for a case, where student names are same, if we know the
student_id we can easily fetch the correct record.
student_id name reg_no branch address
10 Akon 07-WY CSE Kerala
11 Akon 08-WY IT Gujarat
Hence we can say a Primary Key for a table is the column or
a group of columns(composite key) which can uniquely
identify each record in the table.
I can ask from branch name of student with student_id 10, and I
can get it. Similarly, if I ask for name of student with student_id
10 or 11, I will get it. So all I need is student_id and every other
column depends on it, or can be fetched using it.
This is Dependency and we also call it Functional Dependency.
What is Partial Dependency?
Now that we know what dependency is, we are in a better state
to understand what partial dependency is.
For a simple table like Student, a single column like student_id
can uniquely identfy all the records in a table.
But this is not true all the time. So now let's extend our
example to see if more than 1 column together can act as a
primary key.
Let's create another table for Subject, which will have subject_id
and subject_name fields and subject_id will be the primary key.
subject_id subject_name
Index
1 Java
2 C++
3 Php
Now we have a Student table with student information and
another table Subject for storing subject information.
Let's create another table Score, to store the marks obtained by
students in the respective subjects. We will also be saving name
of the teacher who teaches that subject along with marks.
score_id student_id subject_id marks teacher
1 Home 10 Code 1 Library 70 Test
Java TeacherAccount
2 10 2 75 C++ Teacher
3 11 1 80 Java Teacher
In the score table we are saving the student_id to know which
student's marks are these and subject_id to know for which
subject the marks are for.
Together, student_id + subject_id forms a Candidate Key(learn
about Database Keys) for this table, which can be the
Primary key.
Confused, How this combination can be a primary key?
See, if I ask you to get me marks of student with student_id 10,
can you get it from this table? No, because you don't know for
which subject. And if I give you subject_id, you would not know
for which student. Hence we need student_id + subject_id to
uniquely identify any row.
But where is Partial Dependency?
Now if you look at the Score table, we have a column names
teacher which is only dependent on the subject, for Java it's
Java Teacher and for C++ it's C++ Teacher & so on.
Now as we just discussed that the primary key for this table is a
composition of two columns which is student_id & subject_id but the
teacher's name only depends on subject, hence the subject_id, and
has nothing to do with student_id.
This is Partial Dependency, where an attribute in a table
depends on only a part of the primary key and not on the
whole key.
How to remove Partial Dependency?
There can be many different solutions for this, but out objective
is to remove teacher's name from Score table.
The simplest solution is to remove columns teacher from Score
table and add it to the Subject table. Hence, the Subject table will
become:
subject_id subject_name teacher
1 Java Java Teacher
2 C++ C++ Teacher
3 Php Php Teacher
And our Score table is now in the second normal form, with no
partial dependency.
score_id student_id subject_id marks
1 10 1 70
2 10 2 75
3 11 1 80
Quick Recap
1. For a table to be in the Second Normal form, it should be
in the First Normal form and it should not have Partial
Dependency.
2. Partial Dependency exists, when for a composite primary key,
any attribute in the table depends only on a part of the
primary key and not on the complete primary key.
3. To remove Partial dependency, we can divide the table,
remove the attribute which is causing partial dependency,
and move it to some other table where it fits in well.
