MODULE 2

Entity Relationship Model

 CONTENT
• Basic concepts
• Design Issues
• Mapping Constraints
• Keys
• Entity-Relationship Diagram
• Weak Entity Sets
• Extended E-R features
 Basic Concept Of ER-Model
Entity Set
• 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
 Basic Concept Of
ER-Model(Contd.)
• Bus - Company owns busses and will hold information about
them.
• Route - Buses travel on routes and will need described.
• Town - Buses pass through towns and need to know about
them
• Driver - Company employs drivers, personnel will hold their
data.
• Stage - Routes are made up of stages
• Garage - Garage houses buses, and need to know where they
are.
 Basic Concept Of
ER-Model(Contd.)
• An entity is represented by a set of attributes, that is
descriptive properties possessed by all members of an entity
set.
• Attribute types:
– Simple and composite attributes.
– Single-valued and multi-valued attributes
• E.g. multivalued attribute: phone-numbers
– Derived attributes
• Can be computed from other attributes
• E.g. age, given date of birth
Composite Attributes
 Basic Concept Of
ER-Model(ContD.)
Domains
• A domain definition specifies the kind of data represented by the attribute.
More particularly, a domain is the set of all possible values that an attribute
may validly contain. Domains are often confused with data types, but this is
inaccurate.
• Data type is a physical concept while domain is a logical one. “Number” is
a data type and “Age” is a domain. To give another example “StreetName”
and “Surname” might both be represented as text fields, but they are
obviously different kinds of text fields; they belong to different domains.
 Basic Concept Of ER-
Model(ContD.)
Relationship
• A relationship is an association among several entities
Example:
Hayes depositor A-102
customer entity relationship set account 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
 Basic Concept Of ER-
Model(ContD.)
Relationship Sets (Contd.)
• 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
 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.
 Mapping Cardinalities

• 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
(Contd.)

Many to one Many to many

Note: Some elements in A and B may not be mapped to any
elements in the other set
Cardinality Constraints
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 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
 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
• E.g. works-on
 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.
• E.g. 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 the 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

n Rectangles represent entity sets.

n Diamonds represent relationship sets.
n Lines link attributes to entity sets and entity sets to relationship sets.
n Ellipses represent attributes
n Double ellipses represent multivalued attributes.
n Dashed ellipses denote derived attributes.
n Underline indicates primary key attributes
 E-R Diagram With
Composite, Multivalued,
and Derived Attributes
Relationship Sets with
Attributes
 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
Participation of an Entity
Set in a Relationship Set
n Total participation (indicated by double line): every entity in the entity
set participates in at least one relationship in the relationship set
n E.g. participation of loan in borrower is total
n every loan must have a customer associated to it via borrower
n Partial participation: some entities may not participate in any
relationship in the relationship set
n E.g. participation of customer in borrower is partial
 Alternative Notation for
Cardinality Limits
n Cardinality limits can also express participation
constraints
 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
 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
 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.
 Weak Entity Sets (Contd.)
• 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 (ContD.)

• 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

• 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.
 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
EER-Diagram

• Specialization
• Aggregation
• Generalization
 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
 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 (Contd.)

• 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
• E.g. 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
(Contd.)
• 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 (Contd.)
• 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
Summary of Symbols Used
in E-R Notation
Summary of Symbols
(ContD.)
Alternative E-R Notations
E-R Diagram for a Banking
Enterprise