CHAPTER 4

Enhanced Entity-Relationship
(EER) Modeling

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 EER stands for Enhanced ER or Extended ER
 EER Model Concepts
◦ Includes all modeling concepts of basic ER
◦ Additional concepts:
 subclasses/superclasses
 specialization/generalization
 categories (UNION types)
 attribute and relationship inheritance
◦ Constraints on Specialization/Generalization
 The additional EER concepts are used to model
applications more completely and more accurately
◦ EER includes some object-oriented concepts, such as
inheritance
 Knowledge Representation and Ontology Concepts
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 An entity type may have additional meaningful
subgroupings of its entities
◦ Example: EMPLOYEE may be further grouped
into:
 SECRETARY, ENGINEER, TECHNICIAN, …
 Based on the EMPLOYEE’s Job
 MANAGER
 EMPLOYEEs who are managers (the role they play)
 SALARIED_EMPLOYEE, HOURLY_EMPLOYEE
 Based on the EMPLOYEE’s method of pay
 EER diagrams extend ER diagrams to represent
these additional subgroupings, called
subclasses or subtypes
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Subclasses and Superclasses

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 Each of these subgroupings is a subset of EMPLOYEE
entities
 Each is called a subclass of EMPLOYEE
 EMPLOYEE is the superclass for each of these
subclasses
 These are called superclass/subclass relationships:
◦ EMPLOYEE/SECRETARY
◦ EMPLOYEE/TECHNICIAN
◦ EMPLOYEE/MANAGER
◦ …

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 These are also called IS-A relationships
◦ SECRETARY IS-A EMPLOYEE, TECHNICIAN IS-A
EMPLOYEE, ….
 Note: An entity that is member of a subclass represents
the same real-world entity as some member of the
superclass:
◦ The subclass member is the same entity in a distinct
specific role
◦ An entity cannot exist in the database merely by
being a member of a subclass; it must also be a
member of the superclass
◦ A member of the superclass can be optionally
included as a member of any number of its
subclasses

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 Examples:
◦ A salaried employee who is also an engineer
belongs to the two subclasses:
 ENGINEER, and
 SALARIED_EMPLOYEE
◦ A salaried employee who is also an engineering
manager belongs to the three subclasses:
 MANAGER,
 ENGINEER, and
 SALARIED_EMPLOYEE
 It is not necessary that every entity in a
superclass be a member of some subclass
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Specialization (3)

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 An entity that is member of a subclass inherits
◦ All attributes of the entity as a member of
the superclass
◦ All relationships of the entity as a member
of the superclass
 Example:
◦ In the previous slide, SECRETARY (as well as
TECHNICIAN and ENGINEER) inherit the
attributes Name, SSN, …, from EMPLOYEE
◦ Every SECRETARY entity will have values for
the inherited attributes

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 Specialization is the process of defining a set of
subclasses of a superclass
 The set of subclasses is based upon some
distinguishing characteristics of the entities in the
superclass
◦ Example: {SECRETARY, ENGINEER, TECHNICIAN} is a
specialization of EMPLOYEE based upon job type.
◦ Example: MANAGER is a specialization of EMPLOYEE
based on the role the employee plays
 May have several specializations of the same
superclass

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Specialization (3)

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 Generalization is the reverse of the specialization
process
 Several classes with common features are generalized
into a superclass;
◦ original classes become its subclasses
 Example: CAR, TRUCK generalized into VEHICLE;
◦ both CAR, TRUCK become subclasses of the
superclass VEHICLE.
◦ We can view {CAR, TRUCK} as a specialization of
VEHICLE
◦ Alternatively, we can view VEHICLE as a generalization
of CAR and TRUCK

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Generalization (2)

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 Data Modeling with Specialization and
Generalization
◦ A superclass or subclass represents a
collection (or set or grouping) of entities
◦ It also represents a particular type of entity
◦ Shown in rectangles in EER diagrams (as are
entity types)
◦ We can call all entity types (and their
corresponding collections) classes, whether
they are entity types, superclasses, or
subclasses
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 Predicate-defined ( or condition-defined) :
based on some predicate. E.g., based on value
of an attribute, say, Job-type, or Age.
 Attribute-defined: shows the name of the
attribute next to the line drawn from the
superclass toward the subclasses (see Fig. 4.1)
 User-defined: membership is defined by the
user on an entity by entity basis

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 If all subclasses in a specialization have
membership condition on same attribute of the
superclass, specialization is called an attribute-
defined specialization
◦ Attribute is called the defining attribute of the
specialization
◦ Example: JobType is the defining attribute of the
specialization {SECRETARY, TECHNICIAN, ENGINEER} of
EMPLOYEE
 If no condition determines membership, the
subclass is called user-defined
◦ Membership in a subclass is determined by the
database users by applying an operation to add an
entity to the subclass
◦ Membership in the subclass is specified individually
for each entity in the superclass by the user
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 Two basic constraints can apply to a
specialization/generalization:
◦ Disjointness Constraint:
◦ Completeness Constraint:

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 Disjointness Constraint:
◦ Specifies that the subclasses of the specialization must
be disjoint:
 an entity can be a member of at most one of the
subclasses of the specialization
◦ Specified by d in EER diagram
◦ If not disjoint, specialization is overlapping:
 that is the same entity may be a member of more than
one subclass of the specialization
◦ Specified by o in EER diagram

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 Completeness (Exhaustiveness) Constraint:
◦ Total specifies that every entity in the
superclass must be a member of some
subclass in the specialization/generalization
◦ Shown in EER diagrams by a double line
◦ Partial allows an entity not to belong to any
of the subclasses
◦ Shown in EER diagrams by a single line

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 Hence, we have four types of
specialization/generalization:
◦ Disjoint, total
◦ Disjoint, partial
◦ Overlapping, total
◦ Overlapping, partial
 Note: Generalization usually is total because
the superclass is derived from the subclasses.

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Example of overlapping total Specialization

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 A subclass may itself have further subclasses
specified on it
◦ forms a hierarchy or a lattice
 Hierarchy has a constraint that every subclass
has only one superclass (called single
inheritance); this is basically a tree structure
 In a lattice, a subclass can be subclass of more
than one superclass (called multiple
inheritance)

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Shared Subclass “Engineering_Manager”

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 In a lattice or hierarchy, a subclass inherits attributes
not only of its direct superclass, but also of all its
predecessor superclasses
 A subclass with more than one superclass is called a
shared subclass (multiple inheritance)
 Can have:
◦ specialization hierarchies or lattices, or
◦ generalization hierarchies or lattices,
◦ depending on how they were derived
 We just use specialization (to stand for the end result of
either specialization or generalization)

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 In specialization, start with an entity type and
then define subclasses of the entity type by
successive specialization
◦ called a top down conceptual refinement
process
 In generalization, start with many entity types
and generalize those that have common
properties
◦ Called a bottom up conceptual synthesis
process
 In practice, a combination of both processes is
usually employed
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 All of the superclass/subclass relationships we
have seen thus far have a single superclass
 A shared subclass is a subclass in:
◦ more than one distinct superclass/subclass
relationships
◦ each relationships has a single superclass
◦ shared subclass leads to multiple inheritance
 In some cases, we need to model a single
superclass/subclass relationship with more
than one superclass
 Superclasses can represent different entity
types
 Such a subclass is called a category or UNION Sli
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 Example: In a database for vehicle registration, a vehicle
owner can be a PERSON, a BANK (holding a lien on a
vehicle) or a COMPANY.
◦ A category (UNION type) called OWNER is created to
represent a subset of the union of the three
superclasses COMPANY, BANK, and PERSON
◦ A category member must exist in at least one
(typically just one) of its superclasses
 Difference from shared subclass, which is a:
◦ subset of the intersection of its superclasses
◦ shared subclass member must exist in all of its
superclasses

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 Class C:
◦ A type of entity with a corresponding set of
entities:
 could be entity type, subclass, superclass, or
category
 Note: The definition of relationship type in
ER/EER should have 'entity type' replaced with
'class‘ to allow relationships among classes in
general
 Subclass S is a class whose:
 Type inherits all the attributes and relationship of a
class C
 Set of entities must always be a subset of the set of
entities of the other class C
 S⊆C Sli

 C is called the superclass of S

 A superclass/subclass relationship exists between S

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 Subclass S of C is predicate defined if predicate
(condition) p on attributes of C is used to specify
membership in S;
◦ that is, S = C[p], where C[p] is the set of entities in C
that satisfy condition p
 A subclass not defined by a predicate is called user-
defined
 Attribute-defined specialization: if a predicate A = ci
(where A is an attribute of G and ci is a constant value
from the domain of A) is used to specify membership in
each subclass Si in Z
◦ Note: If ci ≠ cj for i ≠ j, and A is single-valued, then
the attribute-defined specialization will be disjoint.

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 Category or UNION type T
◦ A class that is a subset of the union of n defining
superclasses
D1, D2,…Dn, n>1:
 T ⊆ (D1 ∪ D2 ∪ … ∪ Dn)
◦ Can have a predicate pi on the attributes of Di to specify
entities of Di that are members of T.
◦ If a predicate is specified on every Di: T = (D1[p1] ∪ D2[p2]
∪…∪ Dn[pn])

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 ER/EER diagrams are a specific notation for displaying the
concepts of the model diagrammatically
 DB design tools use many alternative notations for the same
or similar concepts
 One popular alternative notation uses UML class diagrams
 see next slides for UML class diagrams and other alternative
notations

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 Introduced the EER model concepts
◦ Class/subclass relationships
◦ Specialization and generalization
◦ Inheritance
 Constraints on EER schemas
 These augment the basic ER model concepts
introduced in Chapter 3
 EER diagrams and alternative notations were
presented
 Knowledge Representation and Ontologies were
introduced and compared with Data Modeling
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