16-Sep-20

Data Modeling Using the

Entity-Relationship (ER)
Model

Outline

 Phases in Database Design

 Example Database Application (COMPANY)
 ER Model Concepts
 Entities and Attributes
 Entity Types, Value Sets, and Key Attributes
 Relationships and Relationship Types
 Weak Entity Types
 Roles and Attributes in Relationship Types
 ER Diagrams - Notation
 ER Diagram for COMPANY Schema

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Phases in Database Design

Example: COMPANY Database

 Requirements of the Company (oversimplified

for illustrative purposes)
 The company is organized into DEPARTMENTs.
Each department has a name, number and an
employee who manages the department. We
keep track of the start date of the department
manager.
 Each department controls a number of
PROJECTs. Each project has a name, number
and is located at a single location.

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Example COMPANY Database

(Cont.)

We store each EMPLOYEE’s social security

number, address, salary, sex, and birthdate.
Each employee works for one department but
may work on several projects. We keep track of
the number of hours per week that an employee
currently works on each project. We also keep
track of the direct supervisor of each employee.
Each employee may have a number of
DEPENDENTs. For each dependent, we keep
track of their name, sex, birthdate, and
relationship to employee.

ER Model Concepts

 Entities and Attributes

 Entities are specific objects or things in the mini-world that
are represented in the database. For example the
EMPLOYEE John Smith, the Research DEPARTMENT, the
ProductX PROJECT
 Attributes are properties used to describe an entity. For
example an EMPLOYEE entity may have a Name, SSN,
Address, Sex, BirthDate
 A specific entity will have a value for each of its attributes.
For example a specific employee entity may have
Name='John Smith', SSN='123456789', Address ='731,
Fondren, Houston, TX', Sex='M', BirthDate='09-JAN-55‘
 Each attribute has a value set (or data type) associated with
it – e.g. integer, string, subrange, enumerated type, …

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Types of Attributes (1)

 Simple
 Each entity has a single atomic value for the attribute. For
example, SSN or Sex.
 Composite
 The attribute may be composed of several components. For
example, Address (Apt#, House#, Street, City, State,
ZipCode, Country) or Name (FirstName, MiddleName,
LastName). Composition may form a hierarchy where some
components are themselves composite.
 Multi-valued
 An entity may have multiple values for that attribute. For
example, Color of a CAR or PreviousDegrees of a STUDENT.
Denoted as {Color} or {PreviousDegrees}.

Types of Attributes (2)

 In general, composite and multi-valued

attributes may be nested arbitrarily to any
number of levels although this is rare. For
example, PreviousDegrees of a STUDENT
is a composite multi-valued attribute
denoted by {PreviousDegrees (College,
Year, Degree, Field)}.

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Entity Types and Key Attributes

 Entities with the same basic attributes are grouped or
typed into an entity type. For example, the EMPLOYEE
entity type or the PROJECT entity type.
 An attribute of an entity type for which each entity must
have a unique value is called a key attribute of the
entity type. For example, SSN of EMPLOYEE.
 A key attribute may be composite. For example,
VehicleTagNumber is a key of the CAR entity type with
components (Number, State).
 An entity type may have more than one key. For
example, the CAR entity type may have two keys:
 VehicleIdentificationNumber (popularly called VIN) and
 VehicleTagNumber (Number, State), also known as
license_plate number.

ENTITY SET corresponding to the

ENTITY TYPE CAR

CAR
Registration(RegistrationNumber, State), VehicleID, Make, Model, Year, (Color)

car1
((ABC 123, TEXAS), TK629, Ford Mustang, convertible, 1999, (red, black))
car2
((ABC 123, NEW YORK), WP9872, Nissan 300ZX, 2-door, 2002, (blue))
car3
((VSY 720, TEXAS), TD729, Buick LeSabre, 4-door, 2003, (white, blue))
.
.
.

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SUMMARY OF ER-DIAGRAM
NOTATION FOR ER SCHEMAS
Symbol Meaning

ENTITY TYPE

WEAK ENTITY TYPE

RELATIONSHIP TYPE

IDENTIFYING RELATIONSHIP TYPE

ATTRIBUTE

KEY ATTRIBUTE

MULTIVALUED ATTRIBUTE

COMPOSITE ATTRIBUTE

DERIVED ATTRIBUTE

E1 R E2 TOTAL PARTICIPATION OF E2 IN R

N CARDINALITY RATIO 1:N FOR E1:E2 IN R

E1 R E2

(min,max) STRUCTURAL CONSTRAINT (min, max) ON PARTICIPATION

R E
OF E IN R

ER DIAGRAM – Entity Types are:

EMPLOYEE, DEPARTMENT, PROJECT, DEPENDENT

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Relationships and Relationship Types (1)

 A relationship relates two or more distinct entities with

a specific meaning. For example, EMPLOYEE John Smith
works on the ProductX PROJECT or EMPLOYEE Franklin
Wong manages the Research DEPARTMENT.
 Relationships of the same type are grouped or typed
into a relationship type. For example, the WORKS_ON
relationship type in which EMPLOYEEs and PROJECTs
participate, or the MANAGES relationship type in which
EMPLOYEEs and DEPARTMENTs participate.
 The degree of a relationship type is the number of
participating entity types. Both MANAGES and
WORKS_ON are binary relationships.

Example relationship instances of the WORKS_FOR

relationship between EMPLOYEE and DEPARTMENT
EMPLOYEE WORKS_FOR DEPARTMENT

e1 
r1  d1
e2  r2
e3  d2
 r3
e4 
r4
e5  d3

r5
e6 

e7 r6


r7

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Example relationship instances of the WORKS_ON

relationship between EMPLOYEE and PROJECT

r9

e1 
r1  p1
e2  r2
e3   p2
r3
e4 
r4
e5  p3

r5
e6 

e7 r6


r7
r8

Relationships and Relationship Types (2)

 More than one relationship type can exist with the same
participating entity types. For example, MANAGES and
WORKS_FOR are distinct relationships between
EMPLOYEE and DEPARTMENT, but with different
meanings and different relationship instances.

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ER DIAGRAM – Relationship Types are:

WORKS_FOR, MANAGES, WORKS_ON, CONTROLS,
SUPERVISION, DEPENDENTS_OF

Weak Entity Types

 An entity that does not have a key attribute
 A weak entity must participate in an identifying
relationship type with an owner or identifying entity
type
 Entities are identified by the combination of:

 A partial key of the weak entity type

 The particular entity they are related to in the

identifying entity type
Example:
Suppose that a DEPENDENT entity is identified by the
dependent’s first name and birthrate, and the specific
EMPLOYEE that the dependent is related to.
DEPENDENT is a weak entity type with EMPLOYEE as
its identifying entity type via the identifying
relationship type DEPENDENT_OF

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Weak Entity Type is: DEPENDENT

Identifying Relationship is: DEPENDENTS_OF

Constraints on Relationships

 Constraints on Relationship Types

Cardinality Ratio
Specifies the maximum number of relationship instances
that an entity can participate in.
 One-to-one (1:1)
 One-to-many (1:N) or Many-to-one (N:1)
 Many-to-many
Participation
 Also called minimum cardinality constraint

 Specifies the minimum number of relationship

instances that each entity can participate in.

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Many-to-one (N:1) RELATIONSHIP

EMPLOYEE WORKS_FOR DEPARTMENT

e1 
r1  d1
e2  r2
e3  d2
 r3
e4 
r4
e5  d3

r5
e6 

e7 r6


r7

Many-to-many (M:N) RELATIONSHIP

r9

e1 
r1  p1
e2  r2
e3   p2
r3
e4 
r4
e5  p3

r5
e6 

e7 r6


r7
r8

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Relationships and Relationship Types (3)

 We can also have a recursive relationship type.

 Both participations are same entity type in different
roles.
 For example, SUPERVISION relationships between
EMPLOYEE (in role of supervisor or boss) and (another)
EMPLOYEE (in role of subordinate or worker).
 In the following figure, first role participation labeled
with 1 and second role participation labeled with 2.
 In ER diagram, need to display role names to
distinguish participations.

A RECURSIVE RELATIONSHIP
SUPERVISION
EMPLOYEE SUPERVISION

e1 2

1 r1
e2  2
1 r2
e3  2
1 r3
e4 
2
e5 1
 1 r4
e6 
2
1
r5
e7 
2
r6

© The Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company, Inc. 1994, Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Second Edition

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Recursive Relationship Type is:

SUPERVISION
(participation role names are shown)

Attributes of Relationship types

 A relationship type can have attributes; for

example, HoursPerWeek of WORKS_ON; its
value for each relationship instance
describes the number of hours per week
that an EMPLOYEE works on a PROJECT.

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Attribute of a Relationship Type is:

Hours of WORKS_ON

Structural Constraints –
one way to express semantics
of relationships
Structural constraints on relationships:
 Cardinality ratio (of a binary relationship): 1:1, 1:N,
N:1, or M:N
SHOWN BY PLACING APPROPRIATE NUMBER ON THE
LINK.
 Participation constraint (on each participating
entity type): total (called existence dependency) or
partial.
SHOWN BY DOUBLE LINING THE LINK

NOTE: These are easy to specify for Binary Relationship

Types.

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Alternative (min, max) notation for

relationship structural constraints:

 Specified on each participation of an entity

type E in a relationship type R
 Specifies that each entity e in E participates in
at least min and at most max relationship
instances in R
 Default(no constraint): min=0, max=n

 Must have minmax, min0, max 1

 Derived from the knowledge of mini-world

constraints

Alternative (min, max) notation for relationship

structural constraints:

Examples:
 A department has exactly one manager and an
employee can manage at most one department.
– Specify (0,1) for participation of EMPLOYEE in
MANAGES
– Specify (1,1) for participation of DEPARTMENT
in MANAGES
 An employee can work for exactly one department
but a department can have any number of
employees.
– Specify (1,1) for participation of EMPLOYEE in
WORKS_FOR
– Specify (0,n) for participation of DEPARTMENT
in WORKS_FOR

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The (min,max) notation

relationship constraints

(0,1) (1,1)

(1,1) (1,N)

COMPANY ER Schema Diagram

using (min, max) notation

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Acknowledgement
Reference for this lecture is

 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe,

Fundamentals of Database Systems,
Pearson Education.

The authors and the publishers are

gratefully acknowledged.

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