Functional Dependency Analysis Exercise: University Course Registration System

Author / Site: Ronald Eaglin, Daytona State College

Summary: This assignment presents a realistic university course registration dataset and asks students to classify a set of potential functional dependencies as Valid, Invalid, or Partially Valid, providing reasoned justifications for each decision. Students analyze relationships among attributes such as StudentID, CourseCode, InstructorID, and composite keys like (CourseCode, Semester). The exercise culminates in a formal written report submitted in Word or PDF format.

Relevance to Module: The exercise directly engages with functional dependencies — a central topic of this module — by grounding abstract dependency concepts in a concrete, multi-attribute relational dataset. It exposes students to both simple and composite key scenarios, trivial versus non-trivial dependencies, and cases where dependencies break down, all within the relational theory context of the module.

Pedagogical Purpose

This assignment serves as a guided practice and assessment activity that requires students to actively apply and analyze functional dependency concepts rather than passively receive them. It directly supports MO2 (distinguishing trivial from non-trivial and valid from invalid functional dependencies given a real attribute set), MO4 (reasoning about composite keys such as (StudentID, CourseCode) and (CourseCode, Semester) to identify candidate key behavior), and MO5 (evaluating a schema for redundancy and anomalies by examining which attributes depend on only part of a composite key, such as GPA varying by semester for the same student).

Added September 9, 2026