Milestone : Minimal Cover

• A set of functional dependencies F is minimal if it satisfies the following conditions :

• 1. Every dependency in F has a single attribute for its right hand side

• 2. We cannot replace any dependence X --> A in F with a dependency Y --> A, where Y is a proper subset of X and still have a set of dependencies that is equivalent to F.

• 3. We cannot remove any dependency from F and still have a set of dependencies that is equivalent to F.

• A minimal cover of a set of functional dependencies F is a minimal set of dependencies Fmin that is equivalent to F.