What are the main principles that form the Boyce-Codd normal form?

Boyce-Codd Normal Form (BCNF) is a stricter version of the third normal form (3NF) in relational databases. The main principle of BCNF is to eliminate all anomalies related to functional dependencies, so that every determinant is a key.

Main principles of BCNF:

• For each functional dependency X → Y in a table, X must be a superkey (i.e., uniquely identify rows).
• If there exists a functional dependency where X is not a key, then the table is not in BCNF.

Example:

If a table has a dependency A → B, but A is not a key, then the table should be split so that each dependency originates from a key.

Thus, BCNF eliminates redundancy and update anomalies, ensuring a stricter normalization of data.