DIFFERENT ERD NOTATIONS

CHEN NOTATION
Peter Chen, who developed entity-relationship modeling and published his work in
1976, was one of the pioneers of using the entity relationship concepts in software and
information system modeling and design. The Chen ERD notation is still used and is
considered to present a more detailed way of representing entities and relationships.

Entities
An entity is represented by a rectangle which contains the entity’s name.
In the Chen notation, we distinguish types of entities:
1. entity

2. weak entity – an entity that cannot be uniquely identified by its attributes alone.
The existence of a weak entity is dependent upon another entity called the owner
entity. The weak entity’s identifier is a combination of the identifier of the owner
entity and the partial key of the weak entity.

3. associative entity – an entity used in a many-to-many relationship (represents

an extra table). All relationships for the associative entity should be many

Attributes
In the Chen notation, each attribute is represented by an oval containing atributte’s
name:

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Attributes are linked to the entity with straight lines:

There are some specific types of attributes:

1. key attribute – an attribute that uniquely identifies a particular entity. The name
of a key attribute is underscored:

For example, since the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) is a unique code
used to identify individual vehicles (no two vehicles have the same VIN), “VIN”
can be considered as the key attribute for the “CAR” entity:

2. partial key attribute (discriminator) – an attribute that, when combined with the
key attribute of the owner entity, provides a unique identification for the weak
entity. We underline the discriminator with a dashed line:

3. multivalued attribute – an attribute that can have many values (there are many
distinct values entered for it in the same column of the table). Multivalued
attribute is depicted by a dual oval:

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 For example, each user can have several different hobbies, therefore the “hobby”
can be considered as a multivalued attribute for the “user” entity:

4. derived attribute (or computed attribute) – an attribute whose value is calculated

(derived) from other attributes. The derived attribute may or may not be
physically stored in the database.
In the Chen notation, this attribute is represented by dashed oval:

For example, having given the price excluding VAT and the VAT rate, we can
calculate the price including VAT:

Some attributes can be further subdivided into smaller parts. For example, the attribute
“address” can be subdivided into street name, street number, apartment number, city,
state, zip code, and country.
These are called composite attributes and are depicted as follows:

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Relationships
In the Chen notation, a relationship is represented by a diamond (rhombus) containing
the relationship’s name.
Two kinds of relationship are distinguished:
1. strong relationship – a relationship where entity is existence-independent of
other entities, and PK of Child doesn’t contain PK component of Parent Entity. A
strong relationship is represented by a single rhombus:

2. weak (identifying) relationship – a relationship where Child entity is existence-

dependent on parent, and PK of Child Entity contains PK component of Parent
Entity. This relationship is represented by a double rhombus:

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 Optionality of a relationship
1. Similarly to the Barker’s notation, a mandatory relationship is represented by a
solid line:

2. An optional relationship is represented by a dashed line like in Barker’s notation:

Cardinality
The degree of relationship (cardinality) is represented by characters “1”, “N” or “M”
usually placed at the ends of the relationships:
 one-to-one (1:1)
The employee can manage only one department, and each department can be
managed by one employee only:

 one-to-many (1:N)
The customer may place many orders, but each order can be placed by one
customer only:

 many-to-one (N:1)
Many employees may belong to one department, but one particular employee can
belong to one department only:

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 many-to-many (M:N)
One student may belong to more than one student organizations, and one
organization can admit more than one student:

Participation constraints
An entity set may participate in a relation either totally or partially.
 Total participation means that every entity in the set is involved in the relationship,
e.g., each student must be guided by a professor (there are no students who are not
guided by any professor). In the Chen notation, this kind of relation is depicted as a
double line.
 Partial participation means that not all entities in the set are involved in the
relationship, e.g., not every professor guides a student (there are professors who
don’t). In the Chen notation, a partial participation is represented by a single line.

The relationship shown above means that each student, without exception, must be
guided by one chosen professor, and one – but not every – professor can guide many
students. So there is no student that is not guided by a professor, and on the other hand
there can be professors who don't guide any students.

Now, let’s see how our example with book and chapter (presented in the previous part)
looks like in the Chen notation.

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CROW’S FOOT NOTATION
The most recognizable characteristic of crow’s foot notation (also known as IE
notation) is that it uses graphical symbols to indicate the ‘many’ side of the
relationship. The three-pronged ‘many’ symbol is also how this widely-used
notation style got its name. Let’s see where crow’s foot is placed in the history
of data modeling and take a look at its symbols.

History: How Crow’s Foot Notation Got Started

The beginning of crow’s foot notation dates back to an article by Gordon Everest (1976,
Fifth Computing Conference, IEEE). The notation naming convention was changing; in
fact, it had been evolving over several years. When asked by me about the issue, Mr.
Everest said:

I called it the “inverted arrow.” at the time to distinguish [it] from Bachman’s notation. I
prefered it to the arrow because it did not imply directionality or a physical access path, and
it was visually intuitive, showing manyness. Others then started referring to it as chicken
feet (e.g., Carlis textbook ¹). I now prefer to call it a FORK, which is short and to the point,
and doesn’t require the possessive crow’s or the longer chicken. In my original paper, the
focus was on “Basic data structures explained with a common example” ² (the title, which
later became chapter 4 in my McGraw Hill text, Database Management, 1986). The use of
the notation was incidental though carefully chosen. I like the fork since it can easily be
represented in a standard character set as in:
[ X ]------<[ Y ]
showing that an individual X can relate to multiple Ys (and each Y relates to at most one X).

Symbols in Crow’s Foot Notation

Let’s now take a look at the representation of entities and relationships in crow’s foot
notation.

Entities
Definition
An entity is a representation of a class of object. It can be a person, place, thing, etc.
Entities usually have attributes that describe them.

In crow’s foot notation, an entity is represented by a rectangle, with its name on the top.
The name is singular (entity) rather than plural (entities).

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 Attributes
Definition
An attribute is a property that describes a particular entity.

The attribute(s) that uniquely distinguishes an instance of the entity is the identifier.
Usually, this type of attribute is marked with an asterisk.

Relationships
Definition
Relationships illustrate the association between two entities. They are presented as a
straight line. Usually, each relationship has a name, expressed as a verb, written on the
relationship line. This describes what kind of relationship connects the objects.
Note that the mentioned type of relationship is binary. In the Entity-Relationship model,
representing a ternary or higher order of relationship is problematic.

Cardinality
Relationships have two indicators. These are shown on both sides of the line.
 The first one (often called multiplicity) refers to the maximum number of times that
an instance of one entity can be associated with instances in the related entity. It can
be one or many.

 The second describes the minimum number of times one instance can be related to
others. It can be zero or one, and accordingly describes the relationship
as optional or mandatory.

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 The combination of these two indicators is always in a specific order. Placed on the
outside edge of the relationship, the symbol of multiplicity comes first. The symbol
indicating whether the relationship is mandatory or optional is shown after the symbol of
multiplicity.

In crow’s foot notation:

 A multiplicity of one and a mandatory relationship is represented by a straight line
perpendicular to the relationship line.
 A multiplicity of many is represented by the three-pronged ‘crow-foot’ symbol.
 An optional relationship is represented by an empty circle.
Finally, there are four possible edges to the relationship, illustrated here:
 zero or many

 one or many

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 one and only one

 zero or one

Relationship degrees make them readable as :

 One-to-one

 One-to-many

 Many-to-many

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