Database Management Systems

CS 5200

Dr. Tehmina Amjad

Spring 2024
Outline
• Database: Conceptual 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
• Alternative Notations – UML class diagrams, others
• Relationships of Higher Degree
• HW2: ER Diagram
• SQL Workshop2: Group By

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Overview of Database Design Process
• Two main activities:
• Database design
• Applications design
• Focus in this chapter on conceptual 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
• Requirements
collection and analysis
• Conceptual design (in a
high-level data model)
• Logical design (data
model mapping)
• Physical design(internal
schema)

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Methodologies for Conceptual Design

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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.

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Example COMPANY Database
• The database will store each EMPLOYEE’s social security number,
address, salary, sex, and birthdate.
• Each employee works for one department but may work on several projects.
• The DB will keep track of the number of hours per week that an employee
currently works on each project.
• It is required to keep track of the direct supervisor of each employee.
• Each employee may have a number of DEPENDENTs.
• For each dependent, the DB keeps a record of name, sex, birthdate, and
relationship to the employee.

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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ER Model Concepts
• Entities and Attributes
• Entity is a basic concept for the ER model. Entities are specific things or objects 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,
date, enumerated type, …

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Types of Attributes
• 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.

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Types of Attributes
• 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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Example of a composite attribute

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Entity Types and Key Attributes
• Entities with the same basic attributes are grouped or typed
into an entity type.
• Entity Type: A collection of entities that share common
properties or characteristics.
• 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 (primary key) of
the entity type.
• For example, SSN of EMPLOYEE.

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Entity Types and Key Attributes
• 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 (Note: this is different from the relational
schema where only one primary key is underlined).

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Entity Set
• Each entity type will have a collection of entities stored in the
database
• Called the entity set or sometimes entity collection
• Entity set is the current state of the entities of that type that are
stored in the database

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Value Sets (Domains) of Attributes
• Each simple attribute is associated with a value set
• E.g., Lastname has a value which is a character string of upto 15 characters,
say
• Date has a value consisting of MM-DD-YYYY where each letter is an integer
• A value set specifies the set of values associated with an attribute

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Displaying an Entity type
• 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 the full ER notation in advance on the next slide

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Types of ER Diagram
• IDEF1X (Integration DEFinition for information modeling (IDEF1X) )
• Crows Foot
• Chen’s Notation

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Types of ER Diagram

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IDEF1X
• Integration DEFinition for information
modeling (IDEF1X) is a data
modeling language for the development
of semantic data models

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 Crows Foot
• Crow's foot diagrams represent entities as boxes, and
relationships as lines between the boxes. Different shapes at
the ends of these lines represent the relative cardinality of
the relationship

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Chen’s Notation
• In 1976, Peter
Chen introduced
the E/R data
model using Chen
notation. While
he did not invent
this concept, his
paper helped to
standardize and
popularize the
model.

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Chen and Crow's Foot Notation (10min)
• WATCH: Data Modeling with Chen and Crow's Foot Notation
• https://northeastern.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=ca
674795-0e95-4bd6-8078-ada400e18ecf&start=0
• WATCH: Conceptual Data Modeling
• https://northeastern.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=e4
874a10-0ff1-4071-8dc7-abe201529c5c&start=0

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NOTATION for ER diagrams in this class

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Entity Type CAR with two keys and a
corresponding Entity Set

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Initial Conceptual 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
• The initial attributes shown are derived from the requirements
description

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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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)

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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Relationships and Relationship Types
• 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.
• Unary relationship
• Binary relationship
• Ternary relationship
• Both MANAGES and WORKS_ON are binary relationships.

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Relationship instances of the WORKS_FOR N:1
relationship between EMPLOYEE and DEPARTMENT

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Relationship instances of the M:N WORKS_ON
relationship between EMPLOYEE and PROJECT

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Relationship
• 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
• Note that the relationship type is not shown with an arrow. The name should
be typically be readable from left to right and top to bottom.

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

31
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)

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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ER DIAGRAM – Relationship Types are:
WORKS_FOR, MANAGES, WORKS_ON, CONTROLS, SUPERVISION, DEPENDENTS_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, shown by single line in ERD)
• one or more (mandatory participation, existence-dependent, shown by double line in
ERD)

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Many-to-one (N:1) Relationship

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Many-to-many (M:N) Relationship

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Recursive Relationship Type
• A relationship type between the same participating entity type in distinct roles
• Also called a self-referencing relationship type.
• 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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Recursive Relationship Type is: SUPERVISION
(participation role names are shown)

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe 38

Weak Entity Types
• An entity that does not have a key attribute and that is identification-dependent on another
entity type.
• 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 relationship 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

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe 39

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

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe 40

Example Attribute of a Relationship Type:
Hours of WORKS_ON

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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.

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe 42

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, min³0, max ³1
• 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 (1,n) for participation of DEPARTMENT in WORKS_FOR

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe 43

The (min,max) notation for relationship
constraints

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COMPANY ER Schema Diagram using (min, max)
notation

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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

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe 46

UML class diagrams
• Represent classes (similar to entity types) as large rounded boxes with three
sections:
• Top section includes entity type (class) name
• Second section includes attributes
• Third section includes class operations (operations are not in basic ER model)
• Relationships (called associations) represented as lines connecting the classes
• Other UML terminology also differs from ER terminology
• Used in database design and object-oriented software design
• UML has many other types of diagrams for software design

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe 47

UML class diagram for COMPANY database schema

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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

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe 50

Example of a ternary relationship

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe 52

Another Example: A UNIVERSITY Database
• To keep track of the enrollments in classes and student grades,
another database is to be designed.
• It keeps track of the COLLEGEs, DEPARTMENTs within each college,
the COURSEs offered by departments, and SECTIONs of courses,
INSTRUCTORs who teach the sections etc.
• These entity types and the relationships among these entity types are
shown on the next slide in Figure 3.20.

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe 56

UNIVERSITY database conceptual schema

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Summary
• ER Model Concepts: Entities, attributes, relationships
• Constraints in the ER model
• Using ER in step-by-step mode conceptual schema design for the
COMPANY database
• ER Diagrams - Notation
• Alternative Notations – UML class diagrams, others
• Binary Relationship types and those of higher degree.

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe 58

[Homework]
• Home work 2: ER Modeling
• Exercise Lab 2: ER Modeling of ”U.S. House of Representatives”
• Submit your ER diagram to Canvas
1. Find Entities
2. Find Relationships
3. Draw and ER schema diagram using erwin or any modeling tools with appropriate options
• You can use one of the following modeling tools:
• erwin Data modeler (Windows Only)
• https://www.erwin.com/products/erwin-data-modeler/
• MySQL workbench (Windows/Mac)
• https://dev.mysql.com/doc/workbench/en/wb-data-modeling.html
• LucidChart (Web-based)
• https://www.lucidchart.com/
• Submit jpg or any imageCopyright
format onRamez
© 2016 Canvas
Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe 59
[Optional Assignments]
• WATCH: Data Modeling with Chen and Crow's Foot Notation
• https://northeastern.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=ca
674795-0e95-4bd6-8078-ada400e18ecf&start=0
• WATCH: Conceptual Data Modeling
• https://northeastern.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=e4
874a10-0ff1-4071-8dc7-abe201529c5c&start=0
• WATCH: Data Modeling Demonstration (ERD)
• https://northeastern.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=a9
6ed115-28e0-465e-98c0-abe20188fbc2&start=0
• WATCH: Availability & Reliability Modeling
• https://northeastern.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=93
040e29-1639-492f-8393-ac5a01641e6a&start=0
Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe 60
• Watch: UML diagram:
https://northeastern.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.as
px?id=c3bf399f-269f-4914-86c3-abb50119fb53

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe 61

[Additional Resources]
• Here are some useful (optional) resources for more information about
data modeling:
• Website: Unified Modeling Language (Links to an external site.)

• Lucid Chart: https://www.lucidchart.com/pages/

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe 62