Chapter 2:

Entity Sets
Entity-Relationship Model
Relationship Sets
Design Issues
Mapping Constraints
Keys
E-R Diagram
Extended E-R Features
Design of an E-R Database Schema
Reduction of an E-R Schema to Tables
Entity Sets

A database can be modeled as:

a collection of entities,
relationship among entities.
An entity is an object that exists and is distinguishable from other
objects.
Example: specific person, company, event, plant
Entities have attributes
Example: people have names and addresses
An entity set is a set of entities of the same type that share the same
properties.
Example: set of all persons, companies, trees, holidays
Entity Sets customer and loan
customer-id customer-name customer-addr customer-city loan-number loan-amount
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:
Simple and composite attributes.
Single-valued and multi-valued attributes
E.g. multivalued attribute: phone-numbers
Derived attributes
Can be computed from other attributes
E.g. age, given date of birth
Composite Attributes
E-R Diagram With Composite, Multivalued, and Derived
Attributes
Relationship Sets
A relationship is an association among several entities
Example:
Hayes depositor A-102
customer entity relationship set 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

Example:
(Hayes, A-102) depositor
Relationship Set borrower
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
Double ellipses represent multivalued attributes.
Dashed ellipses denote derived attributes.
Underline indicates primary key attributes (will study later)
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
Relationship Sets with Attributes
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.

E.g. 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
Relationships between
between entity setsmore than two
employee, entity
job and sets are rare. Most
branch
relationships are binary. (More on this later.)
E-R Diagram with a Ternary Relationship
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
Mapping Cardinalities
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:
One to one
One to many
Many to one
Many to many
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
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
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.
E.g.: One-to-one relationship:
A customer is associated with at most one loan via the relationship borrower
A loan is associated with at most one customer via borrower
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
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
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
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
I.e., the relationship from account to customer is many to one,
or equivalently, customer to account is one to many
 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
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
E.g. participation of customer in borrower is partial
Alternative Notation for Cardinality Limits

Cardinality limits can also express participation constraints

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
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.
Keys for Relationship Sets

The combination of primary keys of the participating entity sets

forms a super key of a relationship set.
(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.
E.g. 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
 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.
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
 Binary Vs. Non-Binary Relationships
Some relationships that appear to be non-binary may be better
represented using binary relationships
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
E.g. works-on
 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.
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
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 2. add (ei , ai ) to RA
3. add (ei , bi ) to RB 4. add (ei , ci ) to RC
 Converting Non-Binary Relationships (Cont.)

Also need to translate constraints

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
 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
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
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.
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)
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
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
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.
Specialization Example
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.
 Specialization and Generalization (Contd.)

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
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
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
 Aggregation (Cont.)
Relationship sets works-on and manages represent overlapping information
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
Treat relationship as an abstract entity
Allows relationships between relationships
Abstraction of relationship into new entity
Without introducing redundancy, the following diagram represents:
An employee works on a particular job at a particular branch
An employee, branch, job combination may have an associated manager
E-R Diagram With Aggregation
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.
E-R Diagram for a Banking Enterprise
Summary of Symbols Used in E-R Notation
Summary of Symbols (Cont.)
Alternative E-R Notations