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Database Design: Dick Steflik

The document discusses database design and entity-relationship diagrams, including identifying entities, attributes, and relationships based on business documents and processes. It also covers normalizing data by eliminating redundancy and structuring data to reduce anomalies when modifying records. The goal is to develop a stable data model by bringing the design to first, second, and third normal form.

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akirank1
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488 views17 pages

Database Design: Dick Steflik

The document discusses database design and entity-relationship diagrams, including identifying entities, attributes, and relationships based on business documents and processes. It also covers normalizing data by eliminating redundancy and structuring data to reduce anomalies when modifying records. The goal is to develop a stable data model by bringing the design to first, second, and third normal form.

Uploaded by

akirank1
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Database Design

Dick Steflik
Entity-Relationship Diagrams
• Entity - any object or thing that is of interest to the organization and
for which data must be stored
• Attribute - a descriptive element, used to characterize an entity or a
relationship. Attributes are the fields that describe an entity.
• Relationship - describe the way that entities interact with each other,
along with the business conditions under which the associate with one
another.
• Cardinality - describes the number of entity relationships that can exist
at each end of a relationship (one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-
many)
• Entity Supertype/subtype - an entity can be divided into two or more
subtype entities, each subtyoe can have attributes of its own.
• Entity Instance - An entity instance is a single occurrence of an entity
• Synonyms - alias’ or other names for an entity or attribute
• Unique identifier - the combination of attributes and relationships that
uniquely identify each instance of the entities
Identifying Entities
• Can be discovered by examining a variety of business documents such
as reports, business plans, business process descriptions…
• Common business entities:
– Customers
– Employees
– Vendors/Suppliers/Partners
– Parts
– Physical assets
– Products/Services
– Locations/places/sites/plants
– Financial assets
Identifying Entities (more)
• The preceding entities could be grouped into 5 generic categories:
– People - employees, vendors, suppliers
– Place - sites, offices, plants, customer locations
– Things - products, parts
– Logical concepts - conceptional objects, services
– Events - time sequence entities, recurring events
• Naming entities:
– Always use singular names
– each entity name must be unique
– the entity name must clearly convey what the entity represents, qualifiers
can be used for clarity
Describing Entities

• Each entity can be described with a set of


properties:
– Entity name
– Alias(s)
– Definition
– Existence constraints
– Business rules
– Volumetrics
– Attributes
– Example(s)
Identifying Relationships

• Relationships can be discovered by:


– interviews with users
– joint facilitated sessions
– examining business documents
– analyzing events
Naming Relationships
• The relationship appears as a line connecting two entities.
• The relationship is written as a verb/verb phrase along the line
• use present tense for the verb/verb phrase

order order-item
contains
Describing relationships
• Relationships convey a lot of information as it is derived from the
current business practices and ploicies of the organization
• Characteristics:
– Relationship name
– Description : unambiguous description of the role and purpose of the
relationship
– Cardinality : describe how many instances of the parent entity are
connected to how many instances of the child entity (on-to-one, one-to-
many, many-to-many)
– Existence constraints: does the relationship depend on other relationships
– Business rules : business policy that defines one or more assertions that
represent constraints. May dictate the business conditions under which a
relationship is created, modified ot deleted.
Identifying Attributes
• Interviews with users
• joint facilitated sessions
• Examining various business or system documents
Naming attributes
• Each attribute of an entity should be uniquely identified
• names should always be singular
• a good practice is to always precede the attribute name with the entity
name
Describing attributes
• Attribute name
• Alias(s)
• Definition
• Existence constraints - what other data is this attribute dependent on
• Business rules - business policy that defines one or more assertions
that represent constraints. May dictate the business conditions under
which a relationship is created, modified ot deleted.
• Domain - set of values which the attribute can take on
• Format - characterization (ex, text, date, time, money.media)
• Length - number of characters or digits
• Default value - initial value when first instantiated
• Derivation algorithm - for derived attributes, the algorithm that is used
to derive the attribute
Business rules

• The policies by which an enterprise runs the business


• often designate constraints on the data used within the enterprise
• can be fount while developing the E-R data model:
– in entities
– relationships
– attributes
– domains
Data Normalization
• Normalization is a formal technique to develop a highly structured
data model
• By using three basic normalization steps we:
– elimination of data redundancy
– structuring of the data for ease of maintenance and modification, done by
reducing the anomalies involved with creation, updating and deletion of
data
– end up with a more stable data model
First Normal Form
• All attributes of an entity must have exactly one single occurrence in
each instance
• a schema whose attributes are all single valued

Employee
Employee_id
Employee_name
Employee_address
Employee_skills
Employee_skills is not single valued, there fore Employee is not in its first
normal form, to make it first normal form it should be moved to its own
structure keyed on Employee_id as on next page
First Normal form (cont)

Employee

Employee_id
Employee_name
Employee_address

Skill Has

Employee_id
Skill_id
Skill_name
Second Normal Form
Every non-key attribute of an entity must be fully dependent upon the
entity’s entire key.

Employee Department
Works in Department_id
Employee_id
Employee_name Dept_name
Wrong
Employee_address
Employs
Dept_location

Employee Department
Works in Department_id
Employee_id
Employee_name Dept_name Correct

Employee_address Dept_location 2NF


Employs
Third Normal Form
An entity is in third normal form is: it is already in 2NF and
every non-key attribute of this entity must not be dependent
upon another non-key attribute

Order

Order_id
Order_date
WRONG
Order_description
Customer_id
Customer_name

Orders Customers
Belongs to
Order_id Customer_id
Order_date places Customer_name CORRECT
Order_description

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