Chapter 6: 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
 Modelling

Modelling is not new!

Can we think of modelling in fields other than computing?
 Modelling

•Architects
•Aeronautical engineers
•Computer architects
•Traffic engineers
 Benefits of Modelling

Many reasons for modelling:

•Focussing on essentials
•Ease of communication and understanding
•Product or process improvement
•Exploring alternatives
 Database Modelling

Before building a database system, an overall abstract

view of the enterprise data must be developed.
The view can then be translated into a form that is
acceptable by the DBMS.
Often a very complex process.
The process can be divided into two phases.
Two-Step Process
 Database Modelling

First phase - an overall view (or model) of the real world

(also called miniworld or UoD) is built. The aim is to
represent, as accurately as possible, the information
structures of the enterprise that are of interest.
Second phase - the model is mapped to a schema
appropriate to the DBMS.
No model provides complete knowledge but we accept
such imperfections to keep the model simple.
 Database Modelling – First Phase
The first phase involves careful analysis of basic
assumptions underlying users’ view. For example:
•What is a player?
•What is a student?
•What is a faculty member?
•Could a person change name during their time?
•Could a person have dual nationality?
•What is a course? What is a degree?
 Modeling
• A database can be modeled as:
– a collection of entities,
– relationship among entities.
• An entity is an object that exists and is
distinguishable from other objects.
– Example: specific person, company, event, plant

• Entities have attributes

– Example: people have names and addresses
• 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
Entity Sets customer and loan
customer_id customer_ customer_ customer_ loan_ amount
name street city number
 Relationship Sets
• A relationship is an association among several
entities
Example:
Hayes depositor A-102
customer entityrelationship setaccount 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:
(Hayes, A-102)  depositor
Relationship Set borrower
 Degree of a Relationship Set
• Refers to number of entity sets that participate in a
relationship set.
• Relationship sets that involve two entity sets are binary
(or degree two). Generally, most relationship sets in a
database system are binary.
• Relationship sets may involve more than two entity sets.
Example: Suppose employees of a bank may have jobs
(responsibilities) at multiple branches, with different jobs
at different branches. Then there is a ternary
relationship set between entity sets employee, job, and
branch

• Relationships between more than two entity sets are

rare. Most relationships are binary.
 Attributes
• An entity is represented by a set of attributes, that is
descriptive properties possessed by all members of an
entity set.
Example:
customer = (customer_id, customer_name,
customer_street, customer_city )
loan = (loan_number, amount )

• Domain – the set of permitted values for each attribute

• Attribute types:
– Simple and composite attributes.
– Single-valued and multi-valued attributes
• Example: multivalued attribute: phone_numbers
– Derived attributes
• Can be computed from other attributes
• Example: age, given date_of_birth
Composite Attributes
Attributes
Complex Attributes
Multivalued Attributes
Derived Attribute
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
 Keys
• A super key of an entity set is a set of one or
more attributes whose values uniquely
determine each entity.
• A candidate key of an entity set is a minimal
super key
– Customer_id is candidate key of customer
– account_number is candidate key of account
• Although several candidate keys may exist,
one of the candidate keys is selected to be the
primary key.
 Keys for Relationship Sets
• The combination of primary keys of the participating entity
sets forms a super key of a relationship set.
– (customer_id, account_number) is the super key of depositor
– NOTE: this means a pair of entity sets can have at most one
relationship in a particular relationship set.
• Example: if we wish to track all access_dates to each account by
each customer, we cannot assume a relationship for each access.
We can use a multivalued attribute though
• Must consider the mapping cardinality of the relationship
set when deciding what are the candidate keys
• Need to consider semantics of relationship set in selecting
the primary key in case of more than one candidate key
E-R Diagrams
 E-R Diagrams
Rectangles represent entity sets.
Diamonds represent relationship sets.
Lines link attributes to entity sets and entity sets to
relationship sets.
Ellipses represent attributes
Double ellipses represent multivalued attributes.
Dashed ellipses denote derived attributes.
Underline indicates primary key attributes (will study later)
E-R Diagram With Composite, Multivalued, and Derived Attributes
Relationship Sets with Attributes
 Relationship Sets (Cont.)
• An attribute can also be property of a relationship set.
• For instance, the depositor relationship set between entity
sets customer and account may have the attribute access-
date
 Roles
• Entity sets of a relationship need not be distinct
• The labels “manager” and “worker” are called
roles; they specify how employee entities interact
via the works_for relationship set.
• Roles are indicated in E-R diagrams by labeling the
lines that connect diamonds to rectangles.
• Role labels are optional, and are used to clarify
semantics of the relationship
Roles
 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:
– A customer is associated with at most one loan via the
relationship borrower
– A loan is associated with at most one customer via
borrower
 One-To-Many Relationship
• In the one-to-many relationship a loan is
associated with at most one customer via
borrower, a customer is associated with
several (including 0) loans via borrower
 Many-To-One Relationships
• In a many-to-one relationship a loan is
associated with several (including 0) customers
via borrower, a customer is associated with at
most one loan via borrower
 Many-To-Many Relationship
• A customer is associated with several (possibly 0)
loans via borrower
• A loan is associated with several (possibly 0)
customers via borrower
 Participation of an Entity Set in a
Relationship Set
Total participation (indicated by double line): every entity
in the entity set participates in at least one relationship in
the relationship set
E.g. participation of loan in borrower is total
 every loan must have a customer associated to it
via borrower
Partial participation: some entities may not participate in
any relationship in the relationship set
Example: participation of customer in borrower is
partial
Alternative Notation for Cardinality
Limits
Cardinality limits can also express participation constraints
E-R Diagram with a Ternary
Relationship
 Cardinality Constraints on Ternary
Relationship
• We allow at most one arrow out of a ternary (or greater
degree) relationship to indicate a cardinality constraint
• E.g. an arrow from works_on to job indicates each employee
works on at most one job at any branch.
• If there is more than one arrow, there are two ways of defining
the meaning.
– E.g a ternary relationship R between A, B and C with arrows to B
and C could mean
1. each A entity is associated with a unique entity from B and C or
2. each pair of entities from (A, B) is associated with a unique C
entity, and each pair (A, C) is associated with a unique B
– Each alternative has been used in different formalisms
– To avoid confusion we outlaw more than one arrow
• Draw an ER diagram for project management
system
Example
 Design Issues
• Use of entity sets vs. attributes
Choice mainly depends on the structure of the enterprise being
modeled, and on the semantics associated with the attribute in
question.
• Use of entity sets vs. relationship sets
Possible guideline is to designate a relationship set to describe an
action that occurs between entities
• Binary versus n-ary relationship sets
Although it is possible to replace any nonbinary (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.
• Placement of relationship attributes
 Binary Vs. Non-Binary Relationships

• Some relationships that appear to be non-binary may

be better represented using binary relationships
– E.g. 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 know)
– But there are some relationships that are naturally non-
binary
• Example: works_on
 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 a special identifying attribute for E
– 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 identified by the three relationship
sets
 Mapping Cardinalities affect ER Design
Can make access-date an attribute of account, instead of a
relationship attribute, if each account can have only one customer
That is, the relationship from account to customer is many to
one, or equivalently, customer to account is one to many
 Weak Entity Sets
• An entity set that does not have a primary key is
referred to as a weak entity set.
• The existence of a weak entity set depends on the
existence of a identifying entity set
– it must relate to the identifying entity set via a total, one-
to-many relationship set from the identifying to the weak
entity set
– Identifying relationship depicted using a double diamond
• The discriminator (or partial key) of a weak entity set is
the set of attributes that distinguishes among all the
entities of a weak entity set.
• The primary key of a weak entity set is formed by the
primary key of the strong entity set on which the weak
entity set is existence dependent, plus the weak entity
set’s discriminator.
Example
 Weak Entity Sets (Cont.)
• We depict a weak entity set by double rectangles.
• We underline the discriminator of a weak entity set with a
dashed line.
• payment_number – discriminator of the payment entity set
• Primary key for payment – (loan_number, payment_number)
 Weak Entity Sets (Cont.)
• Note: the primary key of the strong entity
set is not explicitly stored with the weak
entity set, since it is implicit in the
identifying relationship.
• If loan_number were explicitly stored,
payment could be made a strong entity, but
then the relationship between payment and
loan would be duplicated by an implicit
relationship defined by the attribute
loan_number common to payment and loan
More Weak Entity Set Examples
• In a university, a course is a strong entity and a
course_offering can be modeled as a weak entity
• The discriminator of course_offering would be
semester (including year) and section_number (if
there is more than one section)
• If we model course_offering as a strong entity we
would model course_number as an attribute.
Then the relationship with course would be
implicit in the course_number attribute
 Acadia Teaching Database
Design an E-R schema for a database to store info about
professors,
courses and course sections indicating the following:
• The name and employee ID number of each professor
• The salary and email address(es) for each professor
• How long each professor has been at the university
• The course sections each professor teaches
• The name, number and topic for each course offered
• The section and room number for each course section
• Each course section must have only one professor
• Each course can have multiple sections
 Extended E-R Features: Specialization
• Top-down design process; we designate subgroupings
within an entity set that are distinctive from other
entities in the set.
• These subgroupings 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.
customer “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
Extended ER Features: 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.
 Specialization and Generalization
(Cont.)
• Can have multiple specializations of an entity set
based on different features.
• E.g. permanent_employee vs. temporary_employee,
in addition to officer vs. secretary vs. teller
• Each particular employee would be
– a member of one of permanent_employee or
temporary_employee,
– and also a member of one of officer, secretary, or teller
• The ISA relationship also referred to as superclass -
subclass relationship
 Design Constraints on a Specialization/Generalization
• Constraint on which entities can be members of a
given lower-level entity set.
– condition-defined
• Example: all customers over 65 years are members of senior-
citizen entity set; senior-citizen ISA person.
– user-defined
• Constraint on whether or not entities may belong to
more than one lower-level entity set within a single
generalization.
– Disjoint
• an entity can belong to only one lower-level entity set
• Noted in E-R diagram by writing disjoint next to the ISA
triangle
– Overlapping
• an entity can belong to more than one lower-level entity set
Design Constraints on a Specialization/Generalization
(Cont.)
• Completeness constraint -- specifies whether
or not an entity in the higher-level entity set
must belong to at least one of the lower-level
entity sets within a generalization.
– total : an entity must belong to one of the lower-
level entity sets
– partial: an entity need not belong to one of the
lower-level entity sets
 Aggregation
Consider the ternary relationship works_on, which we saw earlier
Suppose we want to record managers for tasks performed by an
employee at a branch
 Aggregation (Cont.)
• Relationship sets works_on and manages represent
overlapping information
– Every manages relationship corresponds to a works_on
relationship
– However, some works_on relationships may not correspond
to any manages relationships
• So we can’t discard the works_on relationship
• Eliminate this redundancy via aggregation
– Treat relationship as an abstract entity
– Allows relationships between relationships
– Abstraction of relationship into new entity
• Without introducing redundancy, the following diagram
represents:
– An employee works on a particular job at a particular branch
– An employee, branch, job combination may have an
associated manager
E-R Diagram With Aggregation
 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.
The ER conceptual schema
diagram for the COMPANY
database.

67
E-R Diagram for a Banking Enterprise
Summary of Symbols Used in E-R Notation
Summary of Symbols (Cont.)
 Reduction to Relation Schemas
• Primary keys allow entity sets and relationship sets
to 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 as Schemas
• A strong entity set reduces to a schema with the same
attributes.
• A weak entity set becomes a table that includes a column for
the primary key of the identifying strong entity set

payment=(loan_number, payment_number, payment_date,

payment_amount )
 Representing Relationship Sets as
Schemas
• 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 borrower
borrower = (customer_id, loan_number )
 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
account_branch, add an attribute branch_name to the
schema arising from entity set account
 Redundancy of Schemas (Cont.)
• For one-to-one relationship sets, either side can
be chosen to act as the “many” side
– That is, 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
• The schema corresponding to a relationship set
linking a weak entity set to its identifying strong
entity set is redundant.
– Example: The payment schema already contains the
attributes that would appear in the loan_payment
schema (i.e., loan_number and payment_number).
 Composite and Multivalued Attributes
• Composite attributes are flattened out by creating a
separate attribute for each component attribute
– Example: given entity set customer 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
• 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 dependent_names of
employee is represented by a schema:
employee_dependent_names = ( employee_id, dname)
– Each value of the multivalued attribute maps to a separate
tuple of the relation on schema EM
• For example, an employee entity with primary key 123-45-6789
and dependents Jack and Jane maps to two tuples:
(123-45-6789 , Jack) and (123-45-6789 , Jane)
 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 name,street, city
customer name, credit_rating
employee name, 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 name, street, city
customer name, street, city, credit_rating
employee name, street, city, salary

– If specialization is total, the schema for the generalized

entity set (person) not required to store information
• Can be defined as a “view” relation containing union of
specialization relations
• But explicit schema may still be needed for foreign key constraints
– Drawback: street and city may be stored redundantly for
people who are both customers and employees
 Schemas Corresponding to
Aggregation
To represent aggregation, create a schema containing
• primary key of the aggregated relationship,
• the primary key of the associated entity set
• any descriptive attributes
 Schemas Corresponding to
Aggregation (Cont.)
• For example, to represent aggregation manages between relationship
works_on and entity set manager, create a schema
manages (employee_id, branch_name, title, manager_name)
• Schema works_on is redundant provided we are willing to store null
values for attribute manager_name in relation on schema manages
 UML
• UML: Unified Modeling Language
• UML has many components to graphically
model different aspects of an entire
software system
• UML Class Diagrams correspond to E-R
Diagram, but several differences.
Summary of UML Class Diagram Notation
 UML Class Diagrams (Cont.)
• Entity sets are shown as boxes, and attributes are
shown within the box, rather than as separate ellipses
in E-R diagrams.
• Binary relationship sets are represented in UML by just
drawing a line connecting the entity sets. The
relationship set name is written adjacent to the line.
• The role played by an entity set in a relationship set may
also be specified by writing the role name on the line,
adjacent to the entity set.
• The relationship set name may alternatively be written
in a box, along with attributes of the relationship set,
and the box is connected, using a dotted line, to the line
depicting the relationship set.
• Non-binary relationships drawn using diamonds, just as
in ER diagrams
UML Class Diagram Notation (Cont.)

overlapping

disjoint

*Note reversal of position in cardinality constraint depiction

*Generalization can use merged or separate arrows independent
of disjoint/overlapping
 UML Class Diagrams (Contd.)
• Cardinality constraints are specified in the form l..h,
where l denotes the minimum and h the maximum
number of relationships an entity can participate in.
• Beware: the positioning of the constraints is exactly the
reverse of the positioning of constraints in E-R diagrams.
• The constraint 0..* on the E2 side and 0..1 on the E1 side
means that each E2 entity can participate in at most one
relationship, whereas each E1 entity can participate in
many relationships; in other words, the relationship is
many to one from E2 to E1.
• Single values, such as 1 or * may be written on edges; The
single value 1 on an edge is treated as equivalent to 1..1,
while * is equivalent to 0..*.
E-R Diagram for Exercise 2.10
E-R Diagram for Exercise 2.15
E-R Diagram for Exercise 2.22
E-R Diagram for Exercise 2.15
 Existence Dependencies
• If the existence of entity x depends on the existence of
entity y, then x is said to be existence dependent on y.
– y is a dominant entity (in example below, loan)
– x is a subordinate entity (in example below, payment)

loan loan-payment payment

If a loan entity is deleted, then all its associated payment entities

must be deleted also.
Figure 6.8
Figure 6.15
Figure 6.16
Figure 6.26
Figure 6.27
Figure 6.28
Figure 6.29
Figure 6.30
Figure 6.31
Alternative E-R Notations
Figure 6.24