Chapter 6: Entity-Relationship Model

Database System Concepts, 5th Ed.

Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use

Chapter 6: Entity-Relationship Model

Design Process
Modeling
Constraints
E-R Diagram
Design Issues
Weak Entity Sets
Extended E-R Features
Design of the Bank Database
Reduction to Relation Schemas
Database Design
UML

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Modeling
A database can be modeled as:
z

a collection of entities,

relationship among entities.

An entity is an object that exists and is distinguishable from other

objects.
z

Example: specific person, company, event, plant

Entities have attributes

z

Example: people have names and addresses

An entity set is a set of entities of the same type that share the same

properties.
z

Example: set of all persons, companies, trees, holidays

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Entity Sets customer and loan

customer_id customer_ customer_ customer_
name street
city

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loan_
number

amount

Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

Relationship Sets
A relationship is an association among several entities

Example:
Hayes
customer entity

depositor
relationship set

A-102
account entity

A relationship set is a mathematical relation among n 2 entities, each

taken from entity sets

{(e1, e2, en) | e1 E1, e2 E2, , en En}
where (e1, e2, , en) is a relationship
z

Example:
(Hayes, A-102) depositor

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Relationship Set borrower

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Relationship Sets (Cont.)

An attribute can also be property of a relationship set.
For instance, the depositor relationship set between entity sets

customer and account may have the attribute access-date

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Degree of a Relationship Set

Refers to number of entity sets that participate in a relationship

set.
Relationship sets that involve two entity sets are binary (or

degree two). Generally, most relationship sets in a database

system are binary.
Relationship sets may involve more than two entity sets.

Example: Suppose employees of a bank may have jobs

(responsibilities) at multiple branches, with different jobs at
different branches. Then there is a ternary relationship set
between entity sets employee, job, and branch
Relationships between more than two entity sets are rare. Most

relationships are binary. (More on this later.)

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Attributes
An entity is represented by a set of attributes, that is descriptive

properties possessed by all members of an entity set.

Example:
customer = (customer_id, customer_name,
customer_street, customer_city )
loan = (loan_number, amount )
Domain the set of permitted values for each attribute
Attribute types:
z

Simple and composite attributes.

Single-valued and multi-valued attributes

 Example:

multivalued attribute: phone_numbers

Derived attributes
 Can

be computed from other attributes

 Example:

age, given date_of_birth

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Composite Attributes

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Mapping Cardinality Constraints

Express the number of entities to which another entity can be

associated via a relationship set.

Most useful in describing binary relationship sets.
For a binary relationship set the mapping cardinality must be one of

the following types:

z

One to one

One to many

Many to one

Many to many

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Mapping Cardinalities

One to one

One to many

Note: Some elements in A and B may not be mapped to any

elements in the other set
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Mapping Cardinalities

Many to one

Many to many

Note: Some elements in A and B may not be mapped to any

elements in the other set
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Keys
A super key of an entity set is a set of one or more attributes

whose values uniquely determine each entity.

A candidate key of an entity set is a minimal super key
z

Customer_id is candidate key of customer

account_number is candidate key of account

Although several candidate keys may exist, one of the candidate

keys is selected to be the primary key.

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Keys for Relationship Sets

The combination of primary keys of the participating entity sets forms a

super key of a relationship set.

z

(customer_id, account_number) is the super key of depositor

NOTE: this means a pair of entity sets can have at most one
relationship in a particular relationship set.
 Example:

if we wish to track all access_dates to each account by

each customer, we cannot assume a relationship for each
access. We can use a multivalued attribute though

Must consider the mapping cardinality of the relationship set when

deciding the what are the candidate keys

Need to consider semantics of relationship set in selecting the primary

key in case of more than one candidate key

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E-R Diagrams

Rectangles represent entity sets.

Diamonds represent relationship sets.
Lines link attributes to entity sets and entity sets to relationship sets.
Ellipses represent attributes
z

Double ellipses represent multivalued attributes.

Dashed ellipses denote derived attributes.

Underline indicates primary key attributes (will study later)

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E-R Diagram With Composite, Multivalued, and

Derived Attributes

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Relationship Sets with Attributes

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Roles
Entity sets of a relationship need not be distinct
The labels manager and worker are called roles; they specify how

employee entities interact via the works_for relationship set.

Roles are indicated in E-R diagrams by labeling the lines that connect

diamonds to rectangles.
Role labels are optional, and are used to clarify semantics of the

relationship

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Cardinality Constraints
We express cardinality constraints by drawing either a directed line (),

signifying one, or an undirected line (), signifying many, between

the relationship set and the entity set.
One-to-one relationship:
z

A customer is associated with at most one loan via the relationship

borrower

A loan is associated with at most one customer via borrower

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One-To-Many Relationship
In the one-to-many relationship a loan is associated with at most one

customer via borrower, a customer is associated with several (including

0) loans via borrower

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Many-To-One Relationships
In a many-to-one relationship a loan is associated with several

(including 0) customers via borrower, a customer is associated with at

most one loan via borrower

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Many-To-Many Relationship
A customer is associated with several (possibly 0) loans via

borrower
A loan is associated with several (possibly 0) customers via

borrower

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Participation of an Entity Set in a

Relationship Set
Total participation (indicated by double line): every entity in the entity set

participates in at least one relationship in the relationship set

z

E.g. participation of loan in borrower is total



every loan must have a customer associated to it via borrower

Partial participation: some entities may not participate in any relationship in

the relationship set

z

Example: participation of customer in borrower is partial

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Alternative Notation for Cardinality Limits

Cardinality limits can also express participation constraints

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E-R Diagram with a Ternary Relationship

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Cardinality Constraints on Ternary

Relationship
We allow at most one arrow out of a ternary (or greater degree) relationship

to indicate a cardinality constraint

E.g. an arrow from works_on to job indicates each employee works on at

most one job at any branch.

If there is more than one arrow, there are two ways of defining the meaning.
z

E.g a ternary relationship R between A, B and C with arrows to B and C

could mean
1. each A entity is associated with a unique entity from B and C or
2. each pair of entities from (A, B) is associated with a unique C entity,
and each pair (A, C) is associated with a unique B

Each alternative has been used in different formalisms

To avoid confusion we outlaw more than one arrow

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Design Issues
Use of entity sets vs. attributes

Choice mainly depends on the structure of the enterprise being

modeled, and on the semantics associated with the attribute in
question.
Use of entity sets vs. relationship sets

Possible guideline is to designate a relationship set to describe an

action that occurs between entities
Binary versus n-ary relationship sets

Although it is possible to replace any nonbinary (n-ary, for n > 2)

relationship set by a number of distinct binary relationship sets, a
n-ary relationship set shows more clearly that several entities
participate in a single relationship.
Placement of relationship attributes

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Binary Vs. Non-Binary Relationships

Some relationships that appear to be non-binary may be better

represented using binary relationships

z

E.g. A ternary relationship parents, relating a child to his/her father

and mother, is best replaced by two binary relationships, father
and mother
 Using

two binary relationships allows partial information (e.g.

only mother being know)

But there are some relationships that are naturally non-binary

 Example:

works_on

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Converting Non-Binary Relationships to

Binary Form

In general, any non-binary relationship can be represented using binary relationships

by creating an artificial entity set.
z

Replace R between entity sets A, B and C by an entity set E, and three

relationship sets:
1. RA, relating E and A

2.RB, relating E and B

3. RC, relating E and C

z

Create a special identifying attribute for E

Add any attributes of R to E

For each relationship (ai , bi , ci) in R, create

1. a new entity ei in the entity set E
3. add (ei , bi ) to RB

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2. add (ei , ai ) to RA
4. add (ei , ci ) to RC

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Converting Non-Binary Relationships

(Cont.)
Also need to translate constraints
z

Translating all constraints may not be possible

There may be instances in the translated schema that

cannot correspond to any instance of R
 Exercise:

add constraints to the relationships RA, RB and

RC to ensure that a newly created entity corresponds to
exactly one entity in each of entity sets A, B and C

We can avoid creating an identifying attribute by making E a

weak entity set (described shortly) identified by the three
relationship sets

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Mapping Cardinalities affect ER Design

Can make access-date an attribute of account, instead of a relationship

attribute, if each account can have only one customer

z

That is, the relationship from account to customer is many to one, or

equivalently, customer to account is one to many

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How about doing an ER design

interactively on the board?
Suggest an application to be modeled.

Database System Concepts, 5th Ed.

Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use

Weak Entity Sets

An entity set that does not have a primary key is referred to as a weak

entity set.
The existence of a weak entity set depends on the existence of a

identifying entity set

z

it must relate to the identifying entity set via a total, one-to-many

relationship set from the identifying to the weak entity set

Identifying relationship depicted using a double diamond

The discriminator (or partial key) of a weak entity set is the set of

attributes that distinguishes among all the entities of a weak entity set.
The primary key of a weak entity set is formed by the primary key of the

strong entity set on which the weak entity set is existence dependent,
plus the weak entity sets discriminator.

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Weak Entity Sets (Cont.)

We depict a weak entity set by double rectangles.
We underline the discriminator of a weak entity set with a dashed

line.
payment_number discriminator of the payment entity set
Primary key for payment (loan_number, payment_number)

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Weak Entity Sets (Cont.)

Note: the primary key of the strong entity set is not explicitly stored

with the weak entity set, since it is implicit in the identifying

relationship.
If loan_number were explicitly stored, payment could be made a

strong entity, but then the relationship between payment and loan
would be duplicated by an implicit relationship defined by the
attribute loan_number common to payment and loan

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More Weak Entity Set Examples

In a university, a course is a strong entity and a course_offering can

be modeled as a weak entity

The discriminator of course_offering would be semester (including

year) and section_number (if there is more than one section)

If we model course_offering as a strong entity we would model

course_number as an attribute.
Then the relationship with course would be implicit in the
course_number attribute

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Extended E-R Features: Specialization

Top-down design process; we designate subgroupings within an entity set

that are distinctive from other entities in the set.

These subgroupings become lower-level entity sets that have attributes or

participate in relationships that do not apply to the higher-level entity set.

Depicted by a triangle component labeled ISA (E.g. customer is a

person).
Attribute inheritance a lower-level entity set inherits all the attributes

and relationship participation of the higher-level entity set to which it is

linked.

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Specialization Example

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Extended ER Features: Generalization

A bottom-up design process combine a number of entity sets

that share the same features into a higher-level entity set.

Specialization and generalization are simple inversions of each

other; they are represented in an E-R diagram in the same way.

The terms specialization and generalization are used

interchangeably.

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Specialization and Generalization (Cont.)

Can have multiple specializations of an entity set based on different

features.
E.g. permanent_employee vs. temporary_employee, in addition to

officer vs. secretary vs. teller

Each particular employee would be
z

a member of one of permanent_employee or temporary_employee,

and also a member of one of officer, secretary, or teller

The ISA relationship also referred to as superclass - subclass

relationship

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Design Constraints on a
Specialization/Generalization
Constraint on which entities can be members of a given lower-level

entity set.
z

condition-defined
 Example:

all customers over 65 years are members of

senior-citizen entity set; senior-citizen ISA person.

user-defined

Constraint on whether or not entities may belong to more than one

lower-level entity set within a single generalization.

z

Disjoint
 an

entity can belong to only one lower-level entity set

 Noted

in E-R diagram by writing disjoint next to the ISA

triangle

Overlapping
 an

entity can belong to more than one lower-level entity set

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Design Constraints on a
Specialization/Generalization (Cont.)
Completeness constraint -- specifies whether or not an

entity in the higher-level entity set must belong to at least one

of the lower-level entity sets within a generalization.
z

total : an entity must belong to one of the lower-level

entity sets

partial: an entity need not belong to one of the lower-level

entity sets

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Aggregation
Consider the ternary relationship works_on, which we saw earlier
Suppose we want to record managers for tasks performed by an

employee at a branch

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Aggregation (Cont.)
Relationship sets works_on and manages represent overlapping information
z

Every manages relationship corresponds to a works_on relationship

However, some works_on relationships may not correspond to any

manages relationships
 So

we cant discard the works_on relationship

Eliminate this redundancy via aggregation

z

Treat relationship as an abstract entity

Allows relationships between relationships

Abstraction of relationship into new entity

Without introducing redundancy, the following diagram represents:

z

An employee works on a particular job at a particular branch

An employee, branch, job combination may have an associated manager

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E-R Diagram With Aggregation

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E-R Design Decisions

The use of an attribute or entity set to represent an object.
Whether a real-world concept is best expressed by an entity set or

a relationship set.
The use of a ternary relationship versus a pair of binary

relationships.
The use of a strong or weak entity set.
The use of specialization/generalization contributes to modularity

in the design.
The use of aggregation can treat the aggregate entity set as a

single unit without concern for the details of its internal structure.

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E-R Diagram for a Banking Enterprise

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How about doing another ER design

interactively on the board?

Database System Concepts, 5th Ed.

Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use

Summary of Symbols Used in E-R Notation

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Summary of Symbols (Cont.)

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Reduction to Relation Schemas

Primary keys allow entity sets and relationship sets to be

expressed uniformly as relation schemas that represent the

contents of the database.
A database which conforms to an E-R diagram can be

represented by a collection of schemas.

For each entity set and relationship set there is a unique

schema that is assigned the name of the corresponding entity

set or relationship set.
Each schema has a number of columns (generally

corresponding to attributes), which have unique names.

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Representing Entity Sets as Schemas

A strong entity set reduces to a schema with the same attributes.
A weak entity set becomes a table that includes a column for the

primary key of the identifying strong entity set

payment =
( loan_number, payment_number, payment_date, payment_amount )

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Representing Relationship Sets as

Schemas
A many-to-many relationship set is represented as a schema with

attributes for the primary keys of the two participating entity sets,
and any descriptive attributes of the relationship set.
Example: schema for relationship set borrower

borrower = (customer_id, loan_number )

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Redundancy of Schemas
Many-to-one and one-to-many relationship sets that are total on the

many-side can be represented by adding an extra attribute to the

many side, containing the primary key of the one side
Example: Instead of creating a schema for relationship set

account_branch, add an attribute branch_name to the schema

arising from entity set account

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Redundancy of Schemas (Cont.)

For one-to-one relationship sets, either side can be chosen to act as the

many side
z

That is, extra attribute can be added to either of the tables

corresponding to the two entity sets

If participation is partial on the many side, replacing a schema by an

extra attribute in the schema corresponding to the many side could

result in null values
The schema corresponding to a relationship set linking a weak entity set

to its identifying strong entity set is redundant.

z

Example: The payment schema already contains the attributes that

would appear in the loan_payment schema (i.e., loan_number and
payment_number).

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Composite and Multivalued Attributes

Composite attributes are flattened out by creating a separate attribute for

each component attribute

z

Example: given entity set customer with composite attribute name with
component attributes first_name and last_name the schema
corresponding to the entity set has two attributes
name.first_name and name.last_name

A multivalued attribute M of an entity E is represented by a separate

schema EM
z

Schema EM has attributes corresponding to the primary key of E and

an attribute corresponding to multivalued attribute M

Example: Multivalued attribute dependent_names of employee is

represented by a schema:
employee_dependent_names = ( employee_id, dname)

Each value of the multivalued attribute maps to a separate tuple of the

relation on schema EM
 For

example, an employee entity with primary key 123-45-6789

and dependents Jack and Jane maps to two tuples:
(123-45-6789 , Jack) and (123-45-6789 , Jane)

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Representing Specialization via

Schemas
Method 1:
z

Form a schema for the higher-level entity

Form a schema for each lower-level entity set, include primary

key of higher-level entity set and local attributes
schema
person
customer
employee

attributes
name, street, city
name, credit_rating
name, salary

Drawback: getting information about, an employee requires

accessing two relations, the one corresponding to the low-level
schema and the one corresponding to the high-level schema

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Representing Specialization as Schemas

(Cont.)
Method 2:
z

Form a schema for each entity set with all local and inherited attributes
schema
person
customer
employee

attributes
name, street, city
name, street, city, credit_rating
name, street, city, salary

If specialization is total, the schema for the generalized entity set

(person) not required to store information
 Can

be defined as a view relation containing union of specialization

relations

 But
z

explicit schema may still be needed for foreign key constraints

Drawback: street and city may be stored redundantly for people who are
both customers and employees

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Schemas Corresponding to Aggregation

To represent aggregation, create a schema containing
z

primary key of the aggregated relationship,

the primary key of the associated entity set

any descriptive attributes

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Schemas Corresponding to
Aggregation (Cont.)
For example, to represent aggregation manages between

relationship works_on and entity set manager, create a schema

manages (employee_id, branch_name, title, manager_name)
Schema works_on is redundant provided we are willing to store null

values for attribute manager_name in relation on schema manages

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UML
UML: Unified Modeling Language
UML has many components to graphically model different aspects of an

entire software system

UML Class Diagrams correspond to E-R Diagram, but several

differences.

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Summary of UML Class Diagram Notation

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UML Class Diagrams (Cont.)

Entity sets are shown as boxes, and attributes are shown within the

box, rather than as separate ellipses in E-R diagrams.

Binary relationship sets are represented in UML by just drawing a line

connecting the entity sets. The relationship set name is written adjacent
to the line.
The role played by an entity set in a relationship set may also be

specified by writing the role name on the line, adjacent to the entity set.
The relationship set name may alternatively be written in a box, along

with attributes of the relationship set, and the box is connected, using a
dotted line, to the line depicting the relationship set.

Non-binary relationships drawn using diamonds, just as in ER

diagrams

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UML Class Diagram Notation (Cont.)

overlapping

disjoint

*Note reversal of position in cardinality constraint depiction

*Generalization can use merged or separate arrows independent
of disjoint/overlapping
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UML Class Diagrams (Contd.)

Cardinality constraints are specified in the form l..h, where l

denotes the minimum and h the maximum number of

relationships an entity can participate in.
Beware: the positioning of the constraints is exactly the reverse

of the positioning of constraints in E-R diagrams.

The constraint 0..* on the E2 side and 0..1 on the E1 side means

that each E2 entity can participate in at most one relationship,

whereas each E1 entity can participate in many relationships; in
other words, the relationship is many to one from E2 to E1.
Single values, such as 1 or * may be written on edges; The

single value 1 on an edge is treated as equivalent to 1..1, while *

is equivalent to 0..*.

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End of Chapter 2

Database System Concepts, 5th Ed.

Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use

E-R Diagram for Exercise 2.10

Database System Concepts, 5th Ed., slide version 5.0, June 2005

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E-R Diagram for Exercise 2.15

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E-R Diagram for Exercise 2.22

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E-R Diagram for Exercise 2.15

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Existence Dependencies
If the existence of entity x depends on the existence of entity y,

then x is said to be existence dependent on y.

z

y is a dominant entity (in example below, loan)

x is a subordinate entity (in example below, payment)

loan

loan-payment

payment

If a loan entity is deleted, then all its associated payment entities

must be deleted also.

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Figure 6.8

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Figure 6.15

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Figure 6.16

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Figure 6.26

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Figure 6.27

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Figure 6.28

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Figure 6.29

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Figure 6.30

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Figure 6.31

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Alternative E-R Notations

Figure 6.24

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