Chapter 7: Entity-Relationship Model

Database System Concepts, 6th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 Chapter 7: Entity-Relationship Model

 Modeling
 Constraints
 E-R Diagram
 Design Issues
 Weak Entity Sets
 Reduction to Relation Schemas

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.2 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.3 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Entity Sets instructor and student

instructor_ID instructor_name student-ID student_name

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.4 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.5 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Relationship Set advisor

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.6 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Relationship Sets (Cont.)

 An attribute can also be property of 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.7 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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. Most
relationships are binary. (More on this later.)
 Example: students work on research projects under the
guidance of an instructor.
 relationship proj_guide is a ternary relationship between
instructor, student, and project

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.8 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Attributes

 An entity is represented by a set of attributes, that is descriptive

properties possessed by all members of an entity set.
 Example:
instructor = (ID, name, street, city, salary )
course= (course_id, title, credits)
 Domain – the set of permitted values for each attribute
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.9 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Composite Attributes

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.10 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.11 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.12 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.13 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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
 ID is candidate key of instructor
 course_id is candidate key of course
 Although several candidate keys may exist, one of the candidate
keys is selected to be the primary key.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.14 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Keys for Relationship Sets

 The combination of primary keys of the participating entity sets

forms a super key of a relationship set.
 (s_id, i_id) is the super key of advisor
 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 multiple meeting dates between
a student and her advisor, we cannot assume a relationship
for each meeting. 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.15 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Redundant Attributes
 Suppose we have entity sets
 instructor, with attributes including dept_name
 department
and a relationship
 inst_dept relating instructor and department
 Attribute dept_name in entity instructor is redundant since there is an
explicit relationship inst_dept which relates instructors to departments
 The attribute replicates information present in the relationship, and
should be removed from instructor
 BUT: when converting back to tables, in some cases the attribute
gets reintroduced, as we will see.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.16 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 E-R Diagrams

 Rectangles represent entity sets.

 Diamonds represent relationship sets.
 Attributes listed inside entity rectangle
 Underline indicates primary key attributes

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.17 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Entity With Composite, Multivalued, and Derived
Attributes

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.18 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Relationship Sets with Attributes

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.19 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.20 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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 student is associated with at most one instructor via the
relationship advisor
 A student is associated with at most one department via
stud_dept

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.21 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 One-to-One Relationship

 one-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 at most one instructor via
advisor

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.22 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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,

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.23 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.24 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.25 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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 section in sec_course is total
 every section must have an associated course
 Partial participation: some entities may not participate in any
relationship in the relationship set
 Example: participation of instructor in advisor is partial

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.26 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Alternative Notation for Cardinality Limits

 Cardinality limits can also express participation constraints

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.27 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 E-R Diagram with a Ternary Relationship

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.28 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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 proj_guide to instructor indicates each student has
at most one guide for a project
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.29 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 How about doing an ER design
interactively on the board?
Suggest an application to be modeled.

Database System Concepts, 6th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 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.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.31 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Weak Entity Sets (Cont.)
 We underline the discriminator of a weak entity set with a dashed
line.
 We put the identifying relationship of a weak entity in a double
diamond.
 Primary key for section – (course_id, sec_id, semester, year)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.32 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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 course_id were explicitly stored, section could be made a strong
entity, but then the relationship between section and course would
be duplicated by an implicit relationship defined by the attribute
course_id common to course and section

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.33 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 E-R Diagram for a University Enterprise

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.34 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Reduction to Relational Schemas

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.35 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.36 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Representing Entity Sets With Simple
Attributes
 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 )

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.37 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.38 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.39 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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 section schema already contains the attributes
that would appear in the sec_course schema

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.40 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Composite and Multivalued 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
 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)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.41 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Composite and 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)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.42 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Multivalued Attributes (Cont.)
 Special case:entity time_slot has only one attribute other than the
primary-key attribute, and that attribute is multivalued
 Optimization: Don’t create the relation corresponding to the entity,
just create the one corresponding to the multivalued attribute
 time_slot(time_slot_id, day, start_time, end_time)
 Caveat: time_slot attribute of section (from sec_time_slot) cannot be
a foreign key due to this optimization

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.43 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Design Issues
 Use of entity sets vs. attributes

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

(plus multiple phone numbers)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.44 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Design Issues
 Use of entity sets vs. relationship sets
Possible guideline is to designate a relationship set to describe an action
that occurs between entities

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.45 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Design Issues
 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
e.g., attribute date as attribute of advisor or as attribute of student

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.46 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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: proj_guide

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.47 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.48 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 End of Chapter 7

Database System Concepts, 6th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use