relation_schema: Relation schema vectors

In autodb: Automatic Database Normalisation for Data Frames

Relation schema vectors

Description

Creates a set of relation schemas, including the relation's attributes and candidate keys.

Usage

relation_schema(schemas, attrs_order)

Arguments

schemas	a named list of schemas, in the form of two-element lists: the first element contains a character vector of all attributes in the relation schema, and the second element contains a list of character vectors, each representing a candidate key.
attrs_order	a character vector, giving the names of all attributes. These need not be present in schemas, but all attributes in schemas must be present in attrs_order.

Details

Duplicate schemas, after ordering by attribute, are allowed, and can be removed with ⁠\code{\link{unique}}⁠.

When several sets of relation schemas are concatenated, their attrs_order attributes are merged, so as to preserve all of the original attribute orders, if possible. If this is not possible, because the orderings disagree, then the returned value of the attrs_order attribute is their union instead.

Value

A relation_schema object, containing the list given in schemas, with attrs_order stored in an attribute of the same name. Relation schemas are returned with their keys' attributes sorted according to the attribute order in attrs_order, and the keys then sorted by priority order. Attributes in the schema are also sorted, first by order of appearance in the sorted keys, then by order in attrs_order for non-prime attributes.

See Also

attrs, keys, and attrs_order for extracting parts of the information in a relation_schema; create for creating a relation object that uses the given schema; gv for converting the schema into Graphviz code; rename_attrs for renaming the attributes in attrs_order; merge_empty_keys for combining relations with an empty key; merge_schemas for combining relations with matching sets of keys.

Examples

schemas <- relation_schema(
  list(
    a = list(c("a", "b"), list("a")),
    b = list(c("b", "c"), list("b", "c"))
  ),
  attrs_order = c("a", "b", "c", "d")
)
print(schemas)
attrs(schemas)
keys(schemas)
attrs_order(schemas)
names(schemas)

# vector operations
schemas2 <- relation_schema(
  list(
    e = list(c("a", "e"), list("e"))
  ),
  attrs_order = c("a", "e")
)
c(schemas, schemas2) # attrs_order attributes are merged
unique(c(schemas, schemas))

# subsetting
schemas[1]
schemas[c(1, 2, 1)]
stopifnot(identical(schemas[[1]], schemas[1]))

# reassignment
schemas3 <- schemas
schemas3[2] <- relation_schema(
  list(d = list(c("d", "c"), list("d"))),
  attrs_order(schemas3)
)
print(schemas3) # note the schema's name doesn't change
# names(schemas3)[2] <- "d" # this would change the name
keys(schemas3)[[2]] <- list(character()) # removing keys first...
attrs(schemas3)[[2]] <- c("b", "c") # so we can change the attrs legally
keys(schemas3)[[2]] <- list("b", "c") # add the new keys
stopifnot(identical(schemas3, schemas))

# changing appearance priority for attributes
attrs_order(schemas3) <- c("d", "c", "b", "a")
print(schemas3)

# reconstructing from components
schemas_recon <- relation_schema(
  Map(list, attrs(schemas), keys(schemas)),
  attrs_order(schemas)
)
stopifnot(identical(schemas_recon, schemas))

# can be a data frame column
data.frame(id = 1:2, schema = schemas)

autodb documentation built on April 4, 2025, 5:12 a.m.