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Entity-Relationship Model Cont ..: CST203-2 Database Management Systems

The document discusses key concepts in entity-relationship modeling including: 1. Entities can have attributes that uniquely identify them as keys like a student's name ID number. 2. Entities can have weak or strong relationships depending on whether they have their own primary key or identify with another entity. 3. Specialization and generalization allow entities to have subtypes or supertypes through IS-A relationships where subtypes inherit attributes. 4. Aggregation shows that entities can be made of other component entities through part-of relationships.

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Buddhi Dhanushka
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69 views28 pages

Entity-Relationship Model Cont ..: CST203-2 Database Management Systems

The document discusses key concepts in entity-relationship modeling including: 1. Entities can have attributes that uniquely identify them as keys like a student's name ID number. 2. Entities can have weak or strong relationships depending on whether they have their own primary key or identify with another entity. 3. Specialization and generalization allow entities to have subtypes or supertypes through IS-A relationships where subtypes inherit attributes. 4. Aggregation shows that entities can be made of other component entities through part-of relationships.

Uploaded by

Buddhi Dhanushka
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 PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Entity-Relationship Model

Cont…..
CST203-2 Database Management Systems
Lecture 4
Student entity

NID FName LName RegNo ExamId Birthdate


Keys
A Key is a single attribute or combination of two or
more attributes of an entity set that is used to identify
one or more instances of the set
Student entity

NID FName LName RegNo ExamId Birthdate


Super Key
A super key of an entity set is a set of one or more
attributes whose values uniquely determine each
entity.

A superkey is any set of attributes (K) such that no two


tuples of a relation can have the same values for K, i.e:
t1(K) != t2(K) for every possible pair of distinct tuples,
t1,t2.
Student entity

NID FName LName RegNo ExamId Birthdate


Candidate Key
A candidate key is a superkey such that no proper
subset of K is also a superkey.
Customer-id is candidate key of customer
account-number is candidate key of account
Student entity

NID FName LName RegNo ExamId Birthdate


Primary key
Although several candidate keys may exist, one of the
candidate keys is selected to be the primary key.

Primary key does not allow duplicate


values(repeating) and null values
Student entity

NID FName LName RegNo ExamId Birthdate


Unique key
It wont allow duplicate values including NULL...

Means that it will allow any thing only one time


....including null...
Strong entity types
Regular entity types which have a primary key
attributes
Weak Entity Types
An entity type that does not have a primary key

The existence of a weak entity type depends on the existence of a


identifying or owner entity type
 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
Total participation constraint

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.

Weak entity as an attribute


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)


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
Design of ER diagram
Initial design is created and then iteratively refined until the most suitable
design is reached

1. Concept may be first modeled as an attribute and then refined in to


relationship(binary)

2. An attribute that exists in several entity types may be elevated or promoted to


an independent entity type
e.g.: student, instructor, course has the common attribute department number

3. Inverse of 2nd one : if an entity type exists with a single attribute and is related
to only one entity …….

4. Refine using specialization, generalization and relationships of higher degree


Specialization
Top-down design process

we designate subgroupings within an entity set that are distinctive from other
entities in the set.

Specific attributes

Specific relationships

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
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
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 / predicate defined subclasses
 E.g. all customers over 65 years are members of senior-citizen entity set; senior-citizen ISA person.
User-defined specialization

Disjointness constraint
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

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 specialization : an entity must belong to one of the lower-level entity sets
Partial specialization : an entity need not belong to one of the lower-level entity sets
Insertion and deletion rules for
specialization and generalization
Deleting from superclass

Inserting in a superclass
Predicate defined specialization
Total specialization
Aggregation
A class type really represents a collection of individual
components
The system is an aggregation of components

It denotes an "is part of" relationship


E-R Diagram for a Banking Enterprise
Summary of Symbols Used in E-R Notation
Alternative E-R Notations

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