Chapter 3

Database Modeling

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 Chapter Outline
• Overview of Database Design Process
• Data Modelling Using the Entity-Relationship (ER) Model
– Example Database Application (COMPANY)
– Entity Relationship 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
• Enhanced Entity-Relationship (EER) Modelling
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Overview of Database Design Process

 Two main activities:

 Database design
 Applications design

 Focus in this chapter on database design

 To design the conceptual schema for a database
application
 Applications design focuses on the programs and
interfaces that access the database
 Generally considered part of software engineering
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Overview of Database Design Process

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Overview of Database Design Process

1. Requirements collection and analysis

– During this step, the database designers interview prospective database users to
understand and document their data requirements.

– The result is a concisely written set of users’ requirements.

– In parallel with specifying the data requirements, it is useful to specify the known
functional requirements of the application.

– These consist of the user defined operations (or transactions) that will be applied to the
database, including both retrievals and updates.

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Overview of Database Design Process
2. Conceptual schema
– Is a concise description of the data requirements of the users and includes detailed
descriptions of the entity types, relationships, and constraints.
– Expressed using the concepts provided by the high-level data model.

3. Logical design or data model mapping

– Is the actual implementation of the database, using a commercial DBMS.
– The conceptual schema is transformed from the high-level data model into the
implementation data model.
– Most current commercial DBMSs use an implementation data model—such as the
relational (SQL) model.

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Overview of Database Design Process

4. Physical design

– This phase is during which the internal storage structures, file

organizations, indexes, access paths, and physical design
parameters for the database files are specified.

– In parallel with these activities, application programs are

designed and implemented as database transactions
corresponding to the high-level transaction specifications.
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Example COMPANY Database

 We need to create a database schema design based on the

following (simplified) requirements of the COMPANY
Database:
 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.

 A department may have several locations.

 Each department controls a number of PROJECTs.

 Each project has a unique name, unique number and is located at a
single location.
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Example COMPANY Database

 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 the employee.

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Data Modelling Using the Entity-Relationship (ER) Model
 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 the attributes 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.
 Single value
 Most attributes have a single value for a particular entity; such attributes are called
single-valued. For example, age is a single-valued attribute of a person.
 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}.

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 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)}
 Multiple PreviousDegrees values can exist

 Each has four subcomponent attributes:

 College, Year, Degree, Field

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 Types of Attributes (3)
• Stored vs Derived
– Two (or more) attribute values are related—for example, the Age and
Birth_date attributes of a person. The value of Age can be determined
from the current (today’s) date and the value of that person’s Birth_date.

– The Age attribute is hence called a derived attribute and is

said to be derivable from the Birth_date attribute, which is
called a stored attribute.

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Example of A Composite Attribute

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Entity Types and Key Attributes (1)
 Entities with the same basic attributes are
grouped or typed into an entity type.
 For example, the entity type EMPLOYEE and
PROJECT.
 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.

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Entity Types and Key Attributes (2)

 A key attribute may be composite.

 VehicleTagNumber is a key of the CAR entity type

with components (Number, State).

 An entity type may have more than one key.
 The CAR entity type may have two keys:

 VehicleIdentificationNumber (popularly called VIN)

 VehicleTagNumber (Number, State), aka license plate

number.
 Each key is underlined
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 Entity-Relationship Diagram
Cardinality
• An Entity-Relationship (ER) Mapping cardinality or the
diagram is a visual cardinality ratio indicates
representation of the data the number of entities of an
model that illustrates the entity set associated with
entities involved in a entities of another entity
set by means of a
database and the relationship
relationships between them.
• Components of ERD 1. 1 to 1
– Entities 2. 1 to many
3. Many to many
– Attributes
– Relationships
– Cardinality
– Primary key
– Foreign key

For more click here

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Displaying an Entity type using ER

 In ER diagrams, an entity type is displayed in a

rectangular box
 Attributes are displayed in ovals

 Each attribute is connected to its entity type

 Components of a composite attribute are connected
to the oval representing the composite attribute
 Each key attribute is underlined

 Multivalued attributes displayed in double ovals

 See CAR example on next slide

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Entity Type CAR with two keys and a corresponding Entity Set

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Entity Set

 Each entity type will have a collection of entities stored

in the database
 Called the entity set
 Previous slide shows three CAR entity instances in the
entity set for CAR
 Same name (CAR) used to refer to both the entity type
and the entity set
 Entity set is the current state of the entities of that type
that are stored in the database
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Initial Design of Entity Types for the COMPANY Database Schema

 Based on the requirements, we can identify four initial

entity types in the COMPANY database:
 DEPARTMENT
 PROJECT

 EMPLOYEE

 DEPENDENT

 Their initial design is shown on the following slide

 The initial attributes shown are derived from the
requirements description
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Initial Design of Entity Types: EMPLOYEE, DEPARTMENT, PROJECT, DEPENDENT

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Refining The Initial Design by Introducing Relationships
 The initial design is typically not complete
 Some aspects in the requirements will be represented
as relationships
 ER model has three main concepts:
 Entities (and their entity types and entity sets)
 Attributes (simple, composite, multivalued)

 Relationships (and their relationship types and relationship

sets)
 We introduce relationship concepts next
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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.
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Relationship Type Vs. Relationship Set (1)

 Relationship Type:
 Is the schema description of a relationship
 Identifies the relationship name and the participating

entity types
 Also identifies certain relationship constraints

 Relationship Set:
 The current set of relationship instances represented
in the database
 The current state of a relationship type
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Relationship Type Vs. Relationship Set (2)

 Previous figures displayed the relationship sets

 Each instance in the set relates individual

participating entities – one from each participating

entity type
 In ER diagrams, we represent the relationship

type as follows:
 Diamond-shaped box is used to display a relationship type
 Connected to the participating entity types via straight lines

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Refining The COMPANY Database Schema By Introducing Relationships
 By examining the requirements, six relationship types are
identified
 All are binary relationships( degree 2)
 Listed below with their participating entity types:
 WORKS_FOR (between EMPLOYEE, DEPARTMENT)
 MANAGES (also between EMPLOYEE, DEPARTMENT)
 CONTROLS (between DEPARTMENT, PROJECT)
 WORKS_ON (between EMPLOYEE, PROJECT)
 SUPERVISION (between EMPLOYEE (as subordinate),
EMPLOYEE (as supervisor))
 DEPENDENTS_OF (between EMPLOYEE, DEPENDENT)
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Discussion on Relationship Types
 In the refined design, some attributes from the initial entity
types are refined into relationships:
 Manager of DEPARTMENT -> MANAGES
 Works_on of EMPLOYEE -> WORKS_ON
 Department of EMPLOYEE -> WORKS_FOR
 etc
 In general, more than one relationship type can exist between
the same participating entity types
 MANAGES and WORKS_FOR are distinct relationship types
between EMPLOYEE and DEPARTMENT
 Different meanings and different relationship instances.
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Recursive Relationship Type
 An relationship type whose with the same participating entity type in
distinct roles
 Example: the SUPERVISION relationship
 EMPLOYEE participates twice in two distinct roles:
 supervisor (or boss) role
 supervisee (or subordinate) role
 Each relationship instance relates two distinct EMPLOYEE entities:
 One employee in supervisor role
 One employee in supervisee role

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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
 Weak 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:
 A DEPENDENT entity is identified by the dependent’s first name, and the
specific EMPLOYEE with whom the dependent is related
 Name of DEPENDENT is the partial key

 DEPENDENT is a weak entity type

 EMPLOYEE is its identifying entity type via the identifying relationship

type DEPENDENT_OF
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Constraints on Relationships
 Constraints on Relationship Types
 (Also known as ratio constraints)
 Cardinality Ratio (specifies maximum participation)
 One-to-one (1:1)

 One-to-many (1:N) or Many-to-one (N:1)

 Many-to-many (M:N)

 Existence Dependency Constraint (specifies minimum participation)

(also called participation constraint)
 Zero (optional participation, not existence-dependent)

 One or more (mandatory (total) participation, existence-

dependent)
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Recursive Relationship Type is: SUPERVISION (participation role names are
shown)

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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.
 A value of HoursPerWeek depends on a particular

(employee, project) combination

 Most relationship attributes are used with M:N relationships

 In 1:N relationships, they can be transferred to the entity

type on the N-side of the relationship

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Notation for Constraints on Relationships
 Cardinality ratio (of a binary relationship): 1:1,
1:N, N:1, or M:N
 Shown by placing appropriate numbers on the
relationship edges.
 Participation constraint (on each participating
entity type): total (called existence dependency)
or partial.
 Total shown by double line, partial by single line.
 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 (signifying no limit)
 Must have minmax, min0, max 1
 Derived from the knowledge of mini-world 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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Alternative Diagrammatic Notation
 ER diagrams is one popular example for displaying
database schemas
 Many other notations exist in the literature and in
various database design and modeling tools
 Appendix A illustrates some of the alternative notations
that have been used
 UML class diagrams is representative of another way of
displaying ER concepts that is used in several
commercial design tools
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Summary Of Notation For ER Diagrams

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 Mapping ER-Models to Relational Tables
1. Identify Entities: Each entity in the ER model becomes a table in the 8. Resolve Many-to-Many Relationships:
relational model. The table name is often derived from the entity name.
Many-to-many relationships in the ER model
2. Identify Attributes: For each attribute of an entity, create a column in
the corresponding table. The attribute name becomes the column name,
are resolved by introducing an associative
and the data type is chosen based on the nature of the attribute. (junction) table. This table includes foreign
3. Identify Primary Keys: Determine the primary key for each table. This keys referencing the primary keys of the two
could be a single attribute or a combination of attributes that uniquely entities involved in the many-to-many
identifies each row in the table. relationship.
4. Identify Relationships: For each relationship in the ER model, 9. Normalizing Tables: Normalize tables to eliminate
determine how it will be represented in the relational model. This redundancy and dependency issues. Ensure that each table
involves identifying foreign keys. adheres to a specific normal form (e.g., 1NF, 2NF, 3NF).
5. Representing Binary Relationships: For binary relationships, where 10. Review and Refine: Review the relational model to ensure
two entities are involved, the primary key of one entity becomes a that it accurately represents the information captured in the
foreign key in the other entity's table. ER model. Refine the model as needed to improve clarity
6. Representing Ternary and N-ary Relationships: For ternary and n-ary and efficiency.
relationships, additional tables may be needed to represent the 11. Integrity Constraints: Implement integrity constraints, such
association between entities. These tables include foreign keys that as primary key constraints, foreign key constraints, and any
reference the primary keys of the entities involved in the relationship. other business rules specified in the ER model.
7. Cardinality and Multiplicity: Represent the cardinality and 12. Indexes: Identify columns that need indexing for efficient
multiplicity constraints by using foreign keys appropriately. For retrieval of data. Indexes can be created on primary keys
example, if an entity has a "many" relationship with another entity, a and foreign keys to optimize query performance.
foreign key is placed in the "many" side's table.
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 Relationships of Higher Degree
 Relationship types of degree 2 are called binary
 Relationship types of degree 3 are called

ternary and of degree n are called n-ary

 In general, an n-ary relationship is not

equivalent to n binary relationships

 Constraints are harder to specify for higher-

degree relationships (n > 2) than for binary

relationships
Slide 3- 39
 Discussion of n-ary relationships (n > 2)
 In general, 3 binary relationships can represent different
information than a single ternary relationship (see Figure
3.17a and b on next slide)
 If needed, the binary and n-ary relationships can all be
included in the schema design (see Figure 3.17a and b,
where all relationships convey different meanings)
 In some cases, a ternary relationship can be represented as
a weak entity if the data model allows a weak entity type to
have multiple identifying relationships (and hence multiple
owner entity types) (see Figure 3.17c)
Slide 3- 40
 Example of a ternary relationship

Slide 3- 41
 Discussion of n-ary relationships (n > 2)

 If a particular binary relationship can be derived

from a higher-degree relationship at all times,
then it is redundant
 For example, the TAUGHT_DURING binary

relationship in Figure 3.18 (see next slide) can

be derived from the ternary relationship
OFFERS (based on the meaning of the
relationships)
 Another example of a ternary relationship

Slide 3- 43
 Displaying constraints on higher-degree relationships
 The (min, max) constraints can be displayed on the edges –
however, they do not fully describe the constraints
 Displaying a 1, M, or N indicates additional constraints
 An M or N indicates no constraint
 A 1 indicates that an entity can participate in at most one
relationship instance that has a particular combination of the other
participating entities
 In general, both (min, max) and 1, M, or N are needed to
describe fully the constraints
 Some of the Currently Available
Automated Database Design Tools
COMPANY TOOL FUNCTIONALITY
Embarcadero ER Studio Database Modeling in ER and IDEF1X
Technologies
DB Artisan Database administration, space and security
management
Oracle Developer 2000/Designer 2000 Database modeling, application development
Popkin System Architect 2001 Data modeling, object modeling, process modeling,
Software structured analysis/design
Platinum Enterprise Modeling Suite: Data, process, and business component modeling
(Computer Erwin, BPWin, Paradigm Plus
Associates)
Persistence Pwertier Mapping from O-O to relational model
Inc.
Rational (IBM) Rational Rose UML Modeling & application generation in C++/JAVA
Resolution Ltd. Xcase Conceptual modeling up to code maintenance
Sybase Enterprise Application Suite Data modeling, business logic modeling
Visio Visio Enterprise Data modeling, design/reengineering Visual
Slide 3- 45 Basic/C++