Dependency Preservation

It is obvious that the decomposition must be lossless so that we do not lose any information from the relation that is decomposed. Dependency preservation is another main requirement since a dependency is a constraint on the database. If each attributes appearing on the left and the right side of a dependency appear in the similar relation, then a dependency is considered to be preserved. Therefore, dependency preservation can be checked simply. Dependency preservation is important, because as stated previously, dependency is a constraint on a relation. Therefore, if a constraint is split over more than one relation (dependency is not preserved), the constraint would be complex to meet. We will not talk about this in more detail in this unit.  You may refer to the more readings for more details. Though, let us state one basic point:

"A decomposition into 3NF is lossless and dependency preserving whereas a decomposition into BCNF is lossless but may or may not be dependency preserving."