Multivalued Dependency

• Multivalued dependency occurs when two attributes in a table are independent of each other but, both depend on a third attribute.
• A multivalued dependency consists of at least two attributes that are dependent on a third attribute that's why it always requires at least three attributes.

Example: Suppose there is a bike manufacturer company that produces two colors(white and black) of each model every year.

BIKE_MODEL	MANUF_YEAR	COLOR
M2011	2008	White
M2001	2008	Black
M3001	2013	White
M3001	2013	Black
M4006	2017	White
M4006	2017	Black

Here columns COLOR and MANUF_YEAR are dependent on BIKE_MODEL and independent of each other.

In this case, these two columns can be called multivalued dependent on BIKE_MODEL. The representation of these dependencies is shown below:

1. BIKE_MODEL   →  →  MANUF_YEAR  
2. BIKE_MODEL   →  →  COLOR  

This can be read as "BIKE_MODEL multidetermined MANUF_YEAR" and "BIKE_MODEL multidetermined COLOR".