Question

What does “full constraint” mean? Its used in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivalued_dependency

Answer 1

I’m not sure if this is actually a generally used term. The only definition seems to be further down on the very same page, defined by contrast with “embedded constraint” (for which I can’t find definitions anywhere):

full constraint:
A constraint which expresses something about all attributes in a database. (In contrast to an embedded constraint.)

In terms of the example given in the article (two multivalued dependencies course -> book and course -> lecturer), the constraint is “full” in the sense that for every book that appears in the table, there must be all records (course, book, lecturer) that are required by the each course -> lecturer dependencies, and similarly for every lecturer.