BITS Pilani

Pilani Campus

E-R Diagrams

Deepak Saxena
Department of Management
BITS Pilani
Pilani Campus [email protected]
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Basic ER Notation: Entity

• An entity is a person, a place, an

object, an event, or a concept in the
user environment about which the
organization wishes to maintain
data.
• Examples
– Person: EMPLOYEE, STUDENT,
PATIENT
– Place: STORE, WAREHOUSE,
STATE
– Object: MACHINE, BUILDING,
AUTOMOBILE
– Event: SALE, REGISTRATION,
RENEWAL
– Concept: ACCOUNT, COURSE,
WORK CENTER

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Entity Type vs Instances

Entity Type Entity Instances

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Strong vs Weak Entity

• Strong entity type

– An entity that exists independently of other entity types.
• Weak entity type
– An entity type whose existence depends on some other entity
type.

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Basic ER Notation: Attribute

• A property or characteristic of
an entity or relationship type
that is of interest to the
organization.
• Examples
– STUDENT: Student ID,
Student Name, Home
Address, Phone Number,
Major
– AUTOMOBILE: Vehicle ID,
Color, Weight, Horsepower
– EMPLOYEE: Employee ID,
Employee Name, Payroll
Address, Skill

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Attribute: Required vs Optional Attribute

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Various Considerations

• Simple vs Composite
– Simple (Atomic): Student
ID
– Composite: First Name,
Middle Name, Last Name
• Single-valued vs
Multivalued
– Single-valued attribute can
store only one value
– Multivalued attribute may
take on more than one
value

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Various Considerations

• Stored vs Derived
– Stored: recorded directly
– Derived: Calculated based
on other attributed

• Identifier Attributes
/Primary Key
– Is underlined
– Simple
– Composite

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Modeling Relationships

• An association representing an interaction among the instances of

one or more entity types
• Usually a verb

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Relationship Instances

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Relationship Attributes

Conceptual

Logical
Associative Entity
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Relationship Properties

• Cardinality: A rule that specifies the number of instances

of one entity that can (or must) be associated with each
instance of another entity.
– E.g. A copy of a book can be issued by zero or one student.
• Degree: The number of entity types that participate in a
relationship.
– E.g. Issuance of the book happens when a book is issued to a
student (i.e. degree 2).

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Relationship Cardinality

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Cardinality Examples

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Explain

A patient has recorded one or more

patient histories.

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Explain

One or more employees are assigned

to zero or more projects.

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Relationship of different degrees

Unary Relationship

Binary Relationship

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Relationship of different degrees

Ternary Relationship

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 Case Example: Data
model for Pine Valley
Furniture Company

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At times…

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