Scribd
Upload
15 views3 pages

SW 1

Uploaded by

sonugoala100
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
15 views3 pages

SW 1

Uploaded by

sonugoala100
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 3

Title : E-R Modeling from the Problem Statements :

Objectives :
 Identify entity sets, their attributes, and various relationships
 Represent the data model through ER diagram

Entity Relationship Model :


Entity-Relationship model is used to represent a logical design of a database to be
created. In ER model, real world objects (or concepts) are abstracted as entities, and
different possible associations among them are modeled as relationships.
For example, student and school -- they are two entities. Students study in school. So,
these two entities are associated with a relationship "Studies in".
As another example, consider a system where some job runs every night, which updates
the database. Here, job and database could be two entities. They are associated with the
relationship "Updates".

Entity Set and Relationship Set :


An entity set is a collection of all similar entities. For example, "Student" is an entity set
that abstracts all students. Ram, John are specific entities belonging to this set.
Similarly, a "Relationship" set is a set of similar relationships.

Attributes of Entity :
Attributes are the characteristics describing any entity belonging to an entity set. Any
entity in a set can be described by zero or more attributes.
For example, any student has got a name, age, an address. At any given time a student
can study only at one school. In the school he would have a roll number, and of course a
grade in which he studies. These data are the attributes of the entity set Student.

Keys :
One or more attribute(s) of an entity set can be used to define the following keys:
 Super key: One or more attributes, which when taken together, helps to uniquely
identify an entity in an entity set. For example, a school can have any number of
students. However, if we know grade and roll number, then we can uniquely
identify a student in that school.
 Candidate key: It is a minimal subset of a super key. In other words, a super key
might contain extraneous attributes, which do not help in identifying an object
uniquely. When such attributes are removed, the key formed so is called a
candidate key.
 Primary key: A database might have more than one candidate key. Any
candidate key chosen for a particular implementation of the database is called a
primary key.
 Prime attribute: Any attribute taking part in a super key

Weak Entity :
An entity set is said to be weak if it is dependent upon another entity set. A weak entity
can't be uniquely identified only by it's attributes. In other words, it doesn't have a
super key.
For example, consider a company that allows employees to have travel allowance for
their immediate family. So, here we have two entity sets: employee and family, related
by "Can claim for". However, family doesn't have a super key. Existence of a family is
entirely dependent on the concerned employee. So, it is meaningful only with reference
to employee.

Entity Generalization and Specialization:


Once we have identified the entity sets, we might find some similarities among them.
For example, multiple person interacts with a banking system. Most of them are
customers, and rest employees or other service providers. Here, customers, employees
are persons, but with certain specializations. Or in other way, person is the generalized
form of customer and employee entity sets.

Mapping Cardinalities:
One of the main tasks of ER modeling is to associate different entity sets. Let's consider
two entity sets E1 and E2 associated by a relationship set R. Based on the number of
entities in E1 and E2 are associated with, we can have the following four type of
mappings:
 One to one: An entity in E1 is related to at most a single entity in E2, and vice
versa
 One to many: An entity in E1 could be related to zero or more entities in E2. Any
entity in E2 could be related to at most a single entity in E1.
 Many to one: Zero or more number of entities in E1 could be associated to a
single entity in E2. However, an entity in E2 could be related to at most one
entity in E1.
 Many to many: Any number of entities could be related to any number of entities
in E2, including zero, and vice versa.

ER Diagram :
From a given problem statement we identify the possible entity sets, their attributes,
and relationships among different entity sets. Once we have these information, we
represent them pictorially, called an entity-relationship (ER) diagram.
Graphical Notations for ER Diagram

E-R Diagram :

Conclusion :

You might also like