Patent ID: 9116934
Filing Date: 2015-08-25
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A computer implemented method for repairing records of a database, comprising: determining a first set of records of the database that violate a functional dependency from a set of functional dependencies; determining a second set of records of the database using a duplication mechanism wherein the second set of records are duplicate records; appending a duplicate identifier to each record in the second set of records, wherein the duplicate identifier is identical for each record in the second set of records; updating the set of functional dependencies to union a functional dependency based on the duplicate identifier; determining a set of equivalence classes for records of the first set of records and the second set of records consisting of multiple record-attribute pairs; computing a cost metric representing a measure for the cost of modifying records in the first and second sets; merging a pair of equivalence classes of the first set of records and the second set of records into a new class to resolve a functional dependency violation and to perform a duplication of duplicate records; computing a merge cost metric of the merged pair of equivalence classes using the cost metric of each respective class; and modifying records in the first and second sets on the basis of the merge cost metric to provide a modified database instance.