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On the Desirability of Acyclic Database Schemes C A T R I E L BEERI The Hebrew Umversity of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel R O N A L D F A G I N IBM Research Laboratory, San Jose, Cahfornia D A V I D M A I E R State Universztyof New York at Stony Brook, SWny Brook, New York A N D M I H A L I S Y A N N A K A K I S Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey Abstract. A class of database schemes, called acychc, was recently introduced. It is shown that this class has a number of desirable properties. In particular, several desirable properties that have been studied by other researchers m very different terms are all shown to be eqmvalent to acydicity. In addition, several equivalent charactenzauons of the class m terms of graphs and hypergraphs are given, and a smaple algorithm for determining acychclty is presented. Also given are several eqmvalent characterizations of those sets M of multivalued dependencies such that M is the set of muRlvalued dependencies that are the consequences of a given join dependency. Several characterizations for a conflict-free (in the sense of Lien) set of muluvalued dependencies are provided. Categories and Sub}ect Descriptors. F.4.1 [Mathematical Logic and Formal Languages]: Mathematical Logic; G.2.2 [Discrete Mathematics]. Graph Theory--graph algorithms; trees, H.2.1 [Database Manage- ment]: Logical Design--normal formy, schema and subschema; H.3.3 [Information Storage and Re- trieval]: Information Search and Retneval--queryformulatwn General Terms Algorithms, Design, Languages, Management, Theory Additional Key Words and Phrases: Acyclicity, hypergraph, database scheme, relational database, multivalaed dependency, join dependency, conflict-freedom 1. Introduction I n t h e r e l a t i o n a l m