Entity-Relationship Model

Conceptual Design of Database

 Entity-Relationship Model

• Design Process
• Modeling
• Constraints
• E-R Diagram
• Design Issues
• Weak Entity Sets
• Extended E-R Features
• Design of the Bank Database
• Reduction to Relation Schemas
• Database Design
• UML
Overview od Database Design Process
 Design Phases

 The initial phase of database design is to characterize fully the

data needs of the prospective database users.
 Next, the designer chooses a data model and, by applying the
concepts of the chosen data model, translates these requirements
into a conceptual schema of the database.
 A fully developed conceptual schema also indicates the
functional requirements of the enterprise.
 In a “specification of functional requirements”, users describe
the kinds of operations (or transactions) that will be performed
on the data.
 Design Phases (Cont.)

The process of moving from an abstract data model to the

implementation of the database proceeds in two final design phases.

 Logical Design – Deciding on the database schema.

Database design requires that we find a “good” collection of
relation schemas.
 Business decision – What attributes should we record in
the database?
 Computer Science decision – What relation schemas
should we have and how should the attributes be
distributed among the various relation schemas?
 Physical Design – Deciding on the physical layout of the
database
 Design Approaches

 Entity Relationship Model

 Models an enterprise as a collection of entities and relationships
 Entity: a “thing” or “object” in the enterprise that is
distinguishable from other objects
 Described by a set of attributes
 Relationship: an association among several entities
 Represented diagrammatically by an entity-relationship
diagram:
 Normalization Theory
 Formalize what designs are bad, and test for them
Outline of the ER Model
 ER model -- Database Modeling
 The ER data mode was developed to facilitate database design by
allowing specification of an enterprise schema that represents the
overall logical structure of a database.
 The ER model is very useful in mapping the meanings and
interactions of real-world enterprises onto a conceptual
schema.
 Because of this usefulness, many database-design tools draw on
concepts from the ER model.
 The ER data model employs three basic concepts:
 entity sets,
 relationship sets,
 attributes.
 Entity Sets
 An entity is an object that exists and is distinguishable from
other objects.
 Example: specific person, company, event, plant
 An entity set is a set of entities of the same type that share the
same properties.
 Example: set of all persons, companies, trees, holidays
 An entity is represented by a set of attributes; i.e., descriptive
properties possessed by all members of an entity set.
 Example:
instructor = (ID, name, street, city, salary )
course= (course_id, title, credits)
 A subset of the attributes form a primary key of the entity set;
i.e., uniquely identifying each member of the set.
 Entity Sets -- instructor and student
instructor_ID instructor_name student-ID student_name
 Attribute Types
 Simple and composite attributes.
 Single-valued and multivalued attributes
 Example: multivalued attribute: phone_numbers
 Derived attributes
 Can be computed from other attributes
 Example: age, given date_of_birth
• Domain – the set of permitted values for each attribute
Composite Attributes
 Multivalued Attribute
•An attribute can have more than one value. These attributes
are known as a multivalued attribute.
•The double oval is used to represent multivalued attribute.
•For example, a student can have more than one phone
number.

A single-valued attribute is not necessarily a simple

attribute. Example:
Part No: CA-08-02-189935
Location: CA, Factory#:08, shift#: 02, part#: 189935
 Derived Attribute

An attribute that can be derived from other attribute is

known as a derived attribute. It can be represented by a
dashed ellipse.
For example, A person's age changes over time and can be
derived from another attribute like Date of birth.
 Key Attribute

•The key attribute is used to represent the main

characteristics of an entity. It represents a primary key.
•The key attribute is represented by an ellipse with the text
underlined.
Student Entity/Relation in ER Diagram
 Entity Sets
 Entities can be represented graphically as follows:
• Rectangles represent entity sets.
• Attributes listed inside entity rectangle
• Underline indicates primary key attributes
Types of key:
 Relationship Sets
 A relationship is an association among several entities
 Example:
44553 (Peltier) advisor 22222 (Einstein)
student entity relationship set instructor entity
 A relationship set is a mathematical relation among n 
2 entities, each taken from entity sets
 {(e1, e2, … en) | e1  E1, e2  E2, …, en  En}

where (e1, e2, …, en) is a relationship

 Example:
 (44553,22222)  advisor
Relationship Set advisor
 Relationship Sets (Cont.)
 An attribute can also be associated with a relationship set.
 For instance, the advisor relationship set between entity sets instructor and
student may have the attribute date which tracks when the student started
being associated with the advisor
 Roles

 Entity sets of a relationship need not be distinct

 Each occurrence of an entity set plays a “role” in the relationship
 The labels “course_id” and “prereq_id” are called roles.
 Degree of a Relationship Set
 Binary relationship
 involve two entity sets (or degree two).
 most relationship sets in a database system are binary.
 Relationships between more than two entity sets are rare.
 Example: students work on research projects under the
guidance of an instructor.
 relationship proj_guide is a ternary relationship between
instructor, student, and project
 Mapping Cardinality Constraints

 Express the number of entities to which another entity

can be associated via a relationship set.
 Most useful in describing binary relationship sets.
 For a binary relationship set the mapping cardinality
must be one of the following types:
 One to one
 One to many
 Many to one
 Many to many
 Mapping Cardinalities

One to one One to many

Note: Some elements in A and B may not be mapped to any

elements in the other set
 Mapping Cardinalities

Many to one Many to many

Note: Some elements in A and B may not be mapped to any elements in the other set
 Cardinality Constraints
 We express cardinality constraints by drawing either a directed line (),
signifying “one,”
 or an undirected line (—), signifying “many,” between the relationship set
and the entity set.

 One-to-one relationship between an instructor and a student :

 A student is associated with at most one instructor via the relationship
advisor
 One-to-Many Relationship
 one-to-many relationship between an instructor and a student
 an instructor is associated with several (including 0) students
via advisor
 a student is associated with at most one instructor via advisor,
 Many-to-One Relationships

 In a many-to-one relationship between an instructor and a student,

 an instructor is associated with at most one student via
advisor,
 and a student is associated with several (including 0)
instructors via advisor
 Many-to-Many Relationship
 An instructor is associated with several (possibly 0) students via
advisor
 A student is associated with several (possibly 0) instructors via
advisor
Weak Entity Sets
 Weak Entity Sets (Cont.)
 A weak entity set is one whose existence is dependent on another
entity, is said to be existence dependent on the identifying entity
set, We depict a weak entity by double rectangles.
 Every weak entity must be associated with an identifying entity.
 The relationship associating the weak entity set with the
identifying entity set is called the identifying relationship. And
 It is depicted using a double diamond.
 We underline the discriminator of a weak entity set with a
dashed line.
 An entity set that is not a weak entity set is termed a strong entity
set. And also called identifying entity;
 The identifying entity set is said to own the weak entity set that it
identifies.
 Primary key for section – (course_id, sec_id, semester, year)
 Total and Partial Participation
 Total participation (indicated by double line): every entity in the
entity set participates in at least one relationship in the relationship
set

participation of student in advisor relation is total

 every student must have an associated instructor
 Partial participation: some entities may not participate in any
relationship in the relationship set
 Example: participation of instructor in advisor is partial
 Notation for Expressing More Complex Constraints

 A line may have an associated minimum and maximum cardinality,

shown in the form l..h, where l is the minimum and h the maximum
cardinality
 A minimum value of 1 indicates total participation.
 A maximum value of 1 indicates that the entity participates in
at most one relationship
 A maximum value of * indicates no limit.

Instructor can advise 0 or more students. A student must have

1 advisor; cannot have multiple advisors
E-R Diagram for a University Enterprise
Notation to Express Entity with Complex Attributes
E-R Diagram for a COMPANY Enterprise
Reduction to Relation Schemas
 Reduction to Relation Schemas
 Entity sets and relationship sets can be expressed uniformly as
relation schemas that represent the contents of the database.
 A database which conforms to an E-R diagram can be represented by
a collection of schemas.
 For each entity set and relationship set there is a unique schema that
is assigned the name of the corresponding entity set or relationship
set.
 Each schema has a number of columns (generally corresponding to
attributes), which have unique names.
 Representing Entity Sets

 A strong entity set reduces to a schema with the same attributes

student(ID, name, tot_cred)

 A weak entity set becomes a table that includes a column for the
primary key of the identifying strong entity set

section ( course_id, sec_id, sem, year )

 Representing Relationship Sets

 A many-to-many relationship set is represented as a schema with

attributes for the primary keys of the two participating entity sets,
and any descriptive attributes of the relationship set.
 Example: schema for relationship set advisor

advisor = (s_id, i_id)

Representation of Entity Sets with Composite Attributes

 Composite attributes are flattened out by creating a

separate attribute for each component attribute
 Example: given entity set instructor with
composite attribute name with component
attributes first_name and last_name the schema
corresponding to the entity set has two attributes
name_first_name and name_last_name
 Prefix
omitted if there is no ambiguity
(name_first_name could be first_name)
 Ignoring multivalued attributes, extended instructor
schema is
 instructor(ID,
first_name, middle_initial, last_name,
street_number, street_name,
apt_number, city, state, zip_code,
date_of_birth)
Representation of Entity Sets with Multivalued Attributes

 A multivalued attribute M of an entity E is represented by a

separate schema EM
 Schema EM has attributes corresponding to the primary key
of E and an attribute corresponding to multivalued attribute M
 Example: Multivalued attribute phone_number of instructor
is represented by a schema:
inst_phone= ( ID, phone_number)
 Each value of the multivalued attribute maps to a separate
tuple of the relation on schema EM
 For example, an instructor entity with primary key 22222
and phone numbers 456-7890 and 123-4567 maps to two
tuples:
(22222, 456-7890) and (22222, 123-4567)
 Redundancy of Schemas
 Many-to-one and one-to-many relationship sets that are total on the many-
side can be represented by adding an extra attribute to the “many” side,
containing the primary key of the “one” side
 Example: Instead of creating a schema for relationship set inst_dept, add an
attribute dept_name to the schema arising from entity set instructor
 Redundancy of Schemas (Cont.)

 For one-to-one relationship sets, either side can be chosen

to act as the “many” side
 That is, an extra attribute can be added to either of the
tables corresponding to the two entity sets
 If participation is partial on the “many” side, replacing a
schema by an extra attribute in the schema corresponding to
the “many” side could result in null values
 Redundancy of Schemas (Cont.)
 The schema corresponding to a relationship set linking a
weak entity set to its identifying strong entity set is
redundant.

 Example: The section schema already contains the attributes

that would appear in the sec_course schema
 Specialization
 Top-down design process;
 The sub-groupings become lower-level entity sets that have
attributes or participate in relationships that do not apply to the
higher-level entity set.
 Depicted by a triangle component labeled ISA (e.g., instructor “is
a” person).
 Attribute inheritance – a lower-level entity set inherits all the
attributes and relationship participation of the higher-level entity
set to which it is linked.
Specialization Example
 Overlapping – employee and student
 Disjoint – instructor and secretary
 Completeness constraint –
 Total:
 Partial:
 Representing Specialization via Schemas

 Method 1:
 Form a schema for the higher-level entity
 Form a schema for each lower-level entity set, include
primary key of higher-level entity set and local attributes
schema attributes
person ID, name, street, city
student ID, tot_cred
employee ID, salary

 Drawback: getting information about, an employee

requires accessing two relations, the one corresponding to
the low-level schema and the one corresponding to the
high-level schema
Representing Specialization as Schemas (Cont.)

 Method 2:
 Form a schema for each entity set with all local and
inherited attributes
schema attributes
person ID, name, street, city
student ID, name, street, city, tot_cred
employee ID, name, street, city, salary

 Drawback: name, street and city may be stored

redundantly for people who are both students and
employees
 Generalization
 A bottom-up design process – combine a number of entity sets
that share the same features into a higher-level entity set.
 Specialization and generalization are simple inversions of each
other; they are represented in an E-R diagram in the same way.
 The terms specialization and generalization are used
interchangeably.
 Partial generalization is the default.
 The student generalization is total: All student entities must be
either graduate or undergraduate.
 Because the higher-level entity set arrived at through
generalization is generally composed of only those entities in the
lower-level entity sets,
 The completeness constraint for a generalized higher-level entity
set is usually total
Completeness constraint
 Aggregation
 Consider the ternary relationship proj_guide,
 Suppose we want to record evaluations of a student by a
guide on a project
 Aggregation (Cont.)

 Relationship sets eval_for and proj_guide represent

overlapping information
 Every eval_for relationship corresponds to a proj_guide
relationship
 However, some proj_guide relationships may not
correspond to any eval_for relationships
So we can’t discard the proj_guide relationship
 Eliminate this redundancy via aggregation
 Treat relationship as an abstract entity
 Allows relationships between relationships
 Abstraction of relationship into new entity
 Aggregation (Cont.)
 Eliminate this redundancy via aggregation without introducing
redundancy, the following diagram represents:
 A student is guided by a particular instructor on a particular
project
 A student, instructor, project combination may have an
associated evaluation
 Representing Aggregation via Schemas

 To represent aggregation, create a schema containing

 Primary key of the aggregated relationship,
 The primary key of the associated entity set
 Any descriptive attributes
 In our example:
 The schema eval_for is:
eval_for (s_ID, project_id, i_ID, evaluation_id)
 The schema proj_guide is redundant.
Design Issues
 Entities vs. Attributes

 Use of entity sets vs. attributes

 Use of phone as an entity allows extra information about phone numbers

(plus multiple phone numbers)
 Entities vs. Relationship sets
 Use of entity sets vs. relationship sets
Possible guideline is to designate a relationship set to
describe an action that occurs between entities

 Placement of relationship attributes

For example, attribute date as attribute of advisor or as

attribute of student
 Binary Vs. Non-Binary Relationships

 Although it is possible to replace any non-binary (n-ary, for n >

2) relationship set by a number of distinct binary relationship
sets, a n-ary relationship set shows more clearly that several
entities participate in a single relationship.
 Some relationships that appear to be non-binary may be better
represented using binary relationships
 For example, a ternary relationship parents, relating a child
to his/her father and mother, is best replaced by two binary
relationships, father and mother
 Using two binary relationships allows partial information
(e.g., only mother being known)
 But there are some relationships that are naturally non-binary
 Example: proj_guide
 Converting Non-Binary Relationships to Binary Form
 In general, any non-binary relationship can be represented using binary
relationships by creating an artificial entity set.
 Replace R between entity sets A, B and C by an entity set E, and three
relationship sets:
 1. RA, relating E and A 2. RB, relating E and B
3. RC, relating E and C
 Create an identifying attribute for E and add any attributes of R to E
 For each relationship (ai , bi , ci) in R, create
 1. a new entity ei in the entity set E 2. add (ei , ai ) to RA
 3. add (ei , bi ) to RB 4. add (ei , ci ) to RC
 Converting Non-Binary Relationships (Cont.)

 Also need to translate constraints

 Translating all constraints may not be possible
 There may be instances in the translated schema that
cannot correspond to any instance of R
 Exercise: add constraints to the relationships RA, RB
and RC to ensure that a newly created entity
corresponds to exactly one entity in each of entity sets
A, B and C
 We can avoid creating an identifying attribute by making
E a weak entity set (described shortly) identified by the
three relationship sets
 E-R Design Decisions

• The use of an attribute or entity set to represent an object.

• Whether a real-world concept is best expressed by an entity set
or a relationship set.
• The use of a ternary relationship versus a pair of binary
relationships.
• The use of a strong or weak entity set.
• The use of specialization/generalization – contributes to
modularity in the design.
• The use of aggregation – can treat the aggregate entity set as a
single unit without concern for the details of its internal
structure.
Summary of Symbols Used in E-R Notation
Symbols Used in E-R Notation (Cont.)
 Alternative ER Notations
 Chen, IDE1FX, …
Alternative ER Notations

Chen IDE1FX (Crows feet notation)

ER vs. UML(Unified Modeling Language )
Class Diagrams

*Note reversal of position in cardinality constraint depiction

 ER vs. UML Class Diagrams
ER Diagram Notation Equivalent in UML

*Generalization can use merged or separate arrows independent of

disjoint/overlapping