Chapter 4

The Enhanced ER Model and

Business Rules

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Enhanced E-R Model
 An E-R model that has been extended
to include supertype/subtype
relationships and business rules

2
Supertypes and Subtypes

Subtype: A subgrouping of the entities in an entity type
which has attributes that are distinct from those in other
subgroupings

Supertype: An generic entity type that has a relationship
with one or more subtypes
 Inheritance:
– The concept that if an entity is a subtype it retains all
the attributes of the supertype
– Subtype entities inherit values of all attributes of the
supertype
– An instance of a subtype is also an instance of the
supertype
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Basic notation for supertype/subtype relationships

4
Employee supertype with three subtypes

5
Relationships and Subtypes
 Relationships at the supertype level
indicate that all subtypes will participate
in the relationship
 The instances of a subtype may
participate in a relationship unique to that
subtype. In this situation, the relationship
is shown at the subtype level

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Supertype/subtype relationships in a hospital
Generalization and Specialization
 Generalization: The process of defining
a more general entity type from a set of
more specialized entity types. BOTTOM-
UP
 Specialization: The process of defining
one or more subtypes of the supertype,
and forming supertype/subtype
relationships. TOP-DOWN

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Generalization
 The concept that some entities are
subtypes of other more general things
 The process of defining a more general
entity from a set of more specialized
entity types

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 Example of generalization
(a) Three entity types: CAR, TRUCK, and MOTORCYCLE

All these types

of vehicles
have common
attributes
10
Generalization to VEHICLE supertype

So we put
the shared
attributes in
a supertype

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Specialization
 The concept that an entity comes in various subtypes
(opposite of Generalization)
 The process of defining one or more subtypes of the
supertype
 EXAMPLES:
– Ice-cream has several flavors
» Vanilla, Chocolate, Strawberry, …
– Automobiles are of different types
» Van, Sedan, Pickup, MPV, …
– Patients are of different types
» Outpatient, Resident_Patient 12
Example of specialization
(a) Entity type PART
Applies only to purchased parts

Only applies to
manufactured
parts

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Specialization to MANUFACTURED PART and PURCHASED PART

Created 2 subtypes

Note: multivalued attribute was replaced by a relationship to another entity 14

 Constraints in Supertype
 Completeness Constraints: Whether an instance of
a supertype must also be a member of at least one
subtype
– Total Specialization Rule: Yes (double line)
– Partial Specialization Rule: No (single line)

15
Examples of completeness constraints
(a) Total specialization rule

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(b) Partial specialization rule

17
Constraints in Supertype
 Disjointness Constraints: Whether an
instance of a supertype may
simultaneously be a member of two (or
more) subtypes.
– Disjoint Rule: An instance of the supertype
can be only ONE of the subtypes
– Overlap Rule: An instance of the supertype
could be more than one of the subtypes

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Examples of disjointness constraints
(a) Disjoint rule

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(b) Overlap rule

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Constraints in Supertype
 Subtype Discriminator: An attribute of the
supertype whose values determine the target
subtype(s)
– Disjoint – a simple attribute with alternative
values to indicate the possible subtypes
– Overlapping – a composite attribute whose
subparts pertain to different subtypes. Each
subpart contains a boolean value to indicate
whether or not the instance belongs to the
associated subtype
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Introducing a subtype discriminator (disjoint rule)

A simple attribute with

different possible values
indicating the subtype

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Subtype discriminator (overlap rule)

A composite attribute
with sub-attributes
indicating “yes” or “no”
to determine whether it
is of each subtype

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Example of supertype/subtype hierarchy

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Entity Clusters
 EER diagrams are difficult to read when
there are too many entities and
relationships
 Solution: group entities and relationships
into entity clusters
 Entity cluster: set of one or more entity
types and associated relationships
grouped into a single abstract entity type

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The reasons for entity clustering
 Complex enterprise-wide E-R diagram.
 Ability to have a hierarchical
decomposition of data model.
 Desire to focus part of the model on an
area of interest to some community of
users.
 Ability to create several different entity
clusters each with a different focus.

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Possible entity clusters for Pine Valley Furniture

Related
groups of
entities could
become
clusters
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