Module Title: Model Data Object

Unit One: Conceptual data model

This unit is developed to provide you the necessary information regarding the following
content coverage and topics

 Analysis of business data operations

 Scope of the system
 Entities, attributes, data types and relationships of data
 Review business rules
 Documentation of entity relationship diagram

1.1. Analysis of business data operations

I. Understanding Business operations
Business operations are those ongoing cyclic activities involved in the running of a business for the purpose of
producing value.
The outcome of business operations is the harvesting of value from assets owned by a business. Assets can
be either tangible (physical) or intangible. An example of value derived from a physical asset like a building
is rent. An example of value derived from an intangible asset like an idea is a royalty.
Business operations encompasses three fundamental management imperatives
1. Generate recurring income
2. Increase the value of the business assets
3. Secure the income and value of the business
II. Analyzing Business operations
 Operational analysis is a business approach that is used to understand and develop operational processes.
 It is a technique of probing into the present and past performance of an operational investment.
 It measures the performance against particular standard costs, operations and services. It also considers
how goals can be achieved in a better way, how cost effectively they can be achieved.
 It answers the questions related to the areas of:
 Customer Results: tries to determine whether the investment is delivering planned goods and
services or not.
 Strategic and Business Results: It analyses whether the current investment level is sufficient to
get the job done. It looks at how other organizations are doing this work in a better and more cost-
efficient way.
 Financial Performance: analyses whether the cost is compatible with the performance.
 Innovation: It finds solutions to the questions: How can the customers needs be satisfied in a
better way and at a lower cost?; How can technology be best used to provide better services at
lower cost? etc.
III. Major Data Analysis methods
a) Text Analysis
Text Analysis is also referred to as Data Mining. It is one of the methods of data analysis to discover a pattern in
large data sets using databases or data mining tools. It used to transform raw data into business information.
Business Intelligence tools are present in the market which is used to take strategic business decisions. Overall it
offers a way to extract and examine data and deriving patterns and finally interpretation of the data.
b) Statistical Analysis
Statistical Analysis includes collection, Analysis, interpretation, presentation, and modeling of data. It analyses a
set of data or a sample of data.
c) Diagnostic Analysis
Diagnostic Analysis shows "Why did it happen?" by finding the cause from the insight found in Statistical
Analysis. This Analysis is useful to identify behavior patterns of data. If a new problem arrives in into the business
process, then you can look into this Analysis to find similar patterns of that problem. And it may have chances to
use similar prescriptions for the new problems.
d) Predictive Analysis
Predictive Analysis shows "what is likely to happen" by using previous data. The simplest data analysis example
is like if last year I bought two dresses based on my savings and if this year my salary is increasing double then I
can buy four dresses.
This Analysis makes predictions about future outcomes based on current or past data. Forecasting is just an
estimate. Its accuracy is based on how much detailed information you have and how much you dig in it.
e) Prescriptive Analysis
Prescriptive Analysis combines the insight from all previous Analysis to determine which action to take in a
current problem or decision. Most data driven companies are utilizing Prescriptive Analysis because predictive
analysis are not enough to improve data performance. Based on current situations and problems, they analyze the
data and make decisions.

1.2. Scope of the system

1. Define the System Scope
The scope statement/identification defines what the system/project will and will not include, in enough detail to
clearly communicate to all participants. The scope must be a complete definition encompassing all types of
requirements:
 functional requirement
 non-functional requirement
 pseudo requirement

The conceptual or scoping model defines the boundaries of the system (i.e., what is in scope and what is out of
scope). It identifies:
 Events outside the system that cause the system to react,
 Actors outside the system that interact with the system,
 Information that flows between the system and the actors outside the system,
 Major functions included in the system,
 User population.
I. Clarify System Boundaries
In addition to the scope, it is important that the system boundaries are clearly understood. The boundaries identify
where the system to be sized starts and ends. The sizing should include everything for which the team is
responsible.
A scope of a system is identified based on the following
 Databases
 Applications
 Servers
 Operating systems
 Gateways
 Application service provider and
 ISP (Internet service provider)

1.3. Entities, attributes, data types and relationships of data

A. Entity
 An entity is an existing or real thing. The fact that something exists also seems to indicate separateness
from other existences or entities.
In relation to adatabase , an entity is a single person, place, or thing about which data can be stored. ex. school,
student, course, department, employee, university.
 In data modeling (a first step in the creation of a database), an entity is some unit of data that can be
classified and have stated relationships to other entities.
 Are abstract concepts, each representing one/more instances of a concept
 Considered as container that holds all instances of a particular thing in a system.
 Entities are equivalent to database tables in a relational database, with each row of the table representing
an instance of that entity.
 The diagram below has an entity for “student” and “school.” This indicates that the system being modeled
may contain one or more students and one or more schools.

Figure 1.1 Entities

Figure 1.2 Entities

Entity type
 An entity type allows for distinction between the way records are viewed and linked.
 An entity type is a collection of entity instances sharing similar properties;
 Two entity type instances are considered equal only if they are of the same type and the values of their
entity keys are the same.
 The entity type is the fundamental building block for describing the structure of data with the Entity Data
Model (EDM).

Example: The diagram below shows a conceptual model with three entity types: Book, Publisher, andAuthor:

Figure 1.3 Conceptual model

Entity Set
 It is set of entities of the same type (e.g., all persons having an account at a bank)
 An entity set is a logical container for instances of an entity type and instances of any type derived from
that entity type.
 The relationship between an entity type and an entity set is analogous to the relationship between a row
and a table in a relational database:
  Like a row, an entity type describes data structure, and,
 Like a table, an entity set contains instances of a given structure.
 An entity set provides a construct for a hosting or storage environment (such as the common language
runtime or an SQL Server database) to group entity type instances so that they can be mapped to a
datastore.
Example
 Branch: the set of all branches of a particular bank. Each branch is described by the attributes w
Those are: Branch-name, branch-city and assets.

Figure 1.4 Entity examples 1

 Customer: the set of all people having an account at the bank. Attributes are ID, name, Gender,
Gender and Phone-number.

Figure 1.5Entity examples 2

 Employee: with attributes emp-id, name, phone-number, gender and age.

Figure 1.6Entity examples 3

 Account: the set of all accounts created and maintained in the bank. Attributes are account-number
and balance.

Classification of Entity:
a. Strong Entity: An entity set that has a primary key is termed as strong entity.
b. Weak Entity: an entity set that does not have sufficient attributes to form a primary key. The existence
of a weak entity depends on the existence of stored entity. The discriminator (partial key) is used to
identify other attributes of a weak entity set.
 c. Recursive Entity: is one in which a relation can exist between occurrences of the same entity set.
This occurs in a unary relationship.
d. Composite Entities: If a Many to Many relationship exist we must create a bridge entity to convert
into 1 to many. Bridge entity composed of the primary keys of each of the entities to be connected.
The bridge entity is known as a composite entity.
B. Attribute
 A factor/property/characteristic that describes an entity
 In a database management system (DBMS), an attribute may describe a component of the database, such
as a table or a field
Example: (Colour: attribute of your hair/skin/cloth) Employee’s name, age, address, salary and job:
attribute of Employee, etc.
Types of Attributes
a. Simple and Composite Attribute
 Simple attribute: consist of a single atomic value that can’t be subdivided. (For example, age, sex
etc.).
 Composite attribute: can be further subdivided. (E.g.,ADDRESS can be subdivided into city, Sub-
city, Woreda, region, House No., etc.)
b. Single Valued and Multi Valued attribute
 Single valued: can have only one or a single value. For example, a person can have only one 'date of
birth', 'age', etc. But it can be simple or composite attribute. Example: 'date of birth' is a composite
attribute; 'age' is a simple attribute. But both are single valued attributes.
 Multi-valued: can have multiple values. For instance, a person may have multiple phone numbers,
multiple degrees etc. Multi-valued attributes are shown by a double line connecting to the entity in the
ER diagram.
c. Stored and Derived Attributes
 Stored attribute: supplies a value to the related attribute. (e.g., 'Date of birth')
 Derived attribute: the value is derived from the stored attribute. (e.g., the value of 'AGE' can be
derived by subtracting the 'Date of Birth'(DOB) from the current date.
d. Complex Attribute: attribute that is both composite and multi valued. (e.g., Phone no)
2. Selecting Attributes for Entities: choose ones that have the following qualities:
 Significant: Include only attributes that are useful to the database users.
 Direct: not derived. Derived data complicates the maintenance of a database.
 Non-decomposable: An attribute can contain only single values, never lists or repeating groups.
Composite values must be separated into individual attributes.
 Contain data of the same type: For example, you would want to enter only date values in a birthday
attribute, not names or telephone numbers.
Entity Key
 A property or a set of properties of an entity type that are used to determine identity.
 Value of entity key must uniquely identify an entity type instance within an entity set.
 The properties that make up an entity key should be chosen to guarantee uniqueness of instances in an
entity set.
Requirements of entity key:
 No two entity keys within an entity set can be identical. That is, for any two entities within an entity
set, the values for all of the properties that constitute a key can’t be the same.
 An entity key must consist of a set of non-null, immutable, primitive type properties.
 The properties that make up an entity key can’t change. You cannot allow more than one possible
entity key for a given entity type; surrogate keys aren’t supported.
Types of keys
a. Super/Candidate Key: is a field or combination of fields, can act as a primary key for a table to
uniquely identify each record. Every entity in relational database must have at least one candidate key
but it is possible to have two or more. (Example: social security number, employee number or driver
license number may identify an employee. All of them are considered candidate keys)
 b. Primary Key: is an attribute or set of attributes that uniquely identifies one entity from the other.
Every entity must have a primary key. It is a candidate key chosen as the main method of uniquely
identifying a row.
c. Alternate key - is any candidate key which is not selected to be the primary key
d. Foreign Key: references a particular attribute of an entity containing the corresponding primary key.
These keys are used to create relationships between tables. (For example, an employee entity with
employee number as its primary key and department entity with department number as its primary key
can be related to each other through employee number. Therefore, employee number will be a foreign
key for department and primary key for employee).
e. Compound/Composite Key: A Combination of more than one column identifying records of a table
uniquely.
3 Key Terms

1. Conceptual Entity Relationship Diagram: The highest-level view of the entity relationship diagram,
which contains little detail and is solution agnostic. Showing the overall scope of the ERD model from
the business perspective. This level of modeling establishes the entities, and their relationships, and
defines consistent terminology of the business information.
2. Logical Entity Relationship Diagram: Contains mid-level detail. Attributes are introduced and
operational, transactional, and business rules are defined in this model. This entity relationship diagram
level defines the structure of the data elements and the relationships between them. Logical data models
are associated with the solution design.
3. Physical Entity Relationship Diagram: Provides the most detail. It can be developed for each logical
model. Shows enough detail for subject matter experts to build the physical organization of a database.
Physical entity relationship diagrams describe the database-specific implementation of the model and
illustrate non-functional requirements such as performance, concurrency, and security.
4. Database: A structured collection of information. Usually organized so that data can be easily stored to
allow for prompt research, retrieval, and updating.
5. Adjective: Attributes that describe or provide details about the entity. For example, a student (noun) might
have attributes such as name, age, and address. Note, the term "adjective" is used loosely with the concept
of ERDs as many attributes are formally nouns.
6. Noun (common or proper): Entity type of person, object, concept, or event. For example, a person entity
relevant to school enrollment would be a "student".
7. Verb: Relationship types between entities such as enroll. For example, a student (entity) would "enroll"
in a course (entity).

C. Data Types
Database data types refer to the format of data storage that can hold a distinct type or range of values. When
computer programs store data in variables, each variable must be designated a distinct data type. Some common
data types are as follows:
 Integer – is a whole number that can have a positive, negative or zero value. It cannot be a fraction nor can
have decimal places. It is commonly used in programming especially for increasing values. Addition,
subtraction and multiplication of two integers results to an integer. But division of two integers may result
to an integer or a decimal. The resulting decimal can be rounded off or truncated to produce an integer.
 Character – refers to any number, letter, space or symbol that can be entered in a computer. Each character
occupies one byte of space.
 String – is used to represent text. It is composed of a set of characters that can have spaces and
numbers. Strings are enclosed in quotation marks to identify the data as string and not a variable name nor
a number.
 Floating Point Number – is a number that contains decimals. Numbers that contain fractions are also
considered as floating-point numbers.
 Array – contains a group of elements which can be of the same data type like an integer or string. It is used
to organize data for easier sorting and searching of related set of values.
  Varchar – as the name implies is variable character as the memory storage has variable length. Each
character occupies one byte of space plus 2 bytes for length information. Note: Use Character for data entries
with fixed length, like phone number. Use Varchar for data entries with variable length, like address.
 Boolean – is used for creating true or false statements. To compare values the following operators are being
used: AND, OR, XOR, and NOT.
D. Relationship
 It is an association between entities, captures how entities are related to one another. Relationships can be
thought of as verbs, linking two or more nouns.
 A relationship is how the data is shared between entities.
 Are represented by lines between entities, lines indicate that each instance of an entity may have a
relationship with instances of the connected entity, and vice versa.

Figure 1.8 Entity relation

The diagram above indicates that students may have some relationship with schools. More specifically, there
may be a relationship between a particular student (an instance of the student entity) and a particular school (an
instance of the school entity).
If necessary, a relationship line may be labeled to define the relationship. In this case, one can infer that a student
may attend a school, or that a school
may enroll students.

Figure 1.8 Entity relations with verb

Relationship and Entity: can both have attributes. Examples: an employee entity might have a Social Security
Number (SSN) attribute; the proved relationship may have a date attribute.
Two related entities

An entity with an attribute

A relationship with an attribute

Figure 1.9 Relation with entity

There are four types of relationships between entities:

Cardinality: Defines the numerical attributes of the relationship between two entities or entity sets
 One-to-one (1:1): one instance of an entity (A) is associated with one other instance of another entity (B).
For example, in a database of employees, each employee name (A) is associated with only one social
security number (B).
 Figure 1.10 one to one relations

 One-to-many (1: N): is a hierarchical relationship created or viewed from the primary entity. Any one
entity instance from the primary entity can be referenced by many entity instances from the related entity.
One instance of an entity (A) is associated with zero, one or many instances of another entity (B), but for
one instance of entity B there is only one instance of entity (A). Example, for a company with all
employees working in one building, the building name (A) is associated with many different employees
(B), but those employees all share the same singular association with entity

Figure 1.11 one to many relations

 Many-to-one (N: 1): is a hierarchical relationship created or viewed from the related entity. Many entity
instances from the related entity can reference any one entity instance from the primary entity. Remember
that the same relationship can be viewed from either of the two entities that participate in the relationship.

Figure 1.13 many to one relation

 Many-to-many (N: N): A many-to-many relationship lets users relate one or more entity instances from
another entity to an entity instance of the current entity. A many-to-many relationship is reciprocal.
Therefore, entity instances can be related from either entity. One instance of an entity (A) is associated
with one, zero or many instances of another entity (B), and one instance of entity B is associated with one,
zero or many instances of entity A. For example, for a company in which all of its employees work on
multiple projects, each instance of an employee (A) is associated with many instances of a project (B),
 and at the same time, each instance of a project (B) has multiple employees (A) associated with it.

Figure 1.13 many to many relations

1.4. Review business rules

I. Business rule
 It is a rule of a business, company, or corporation that defines or constrains some aspect of business and
always resolves to either true or false.
 It is a statement that defines or constrains some aspect of the business, intended to assert business structure,
to control/influence behavior of the business.
 Describes the operations, definitions and constraints that apply to an organization.
 Tells an organization what it can do in detail, provides detailed guidance about how a strategy can be translated
to action.
 Can apply to people, processes, corporate behavior and computing systems in an organization, and are put in
place to help the organization achieve its goals.
 While a business rule may be informal or even unwritten, writing the rules down clearly and making sure that
they don't conflict, is a valuable activity.
 When carefully managed, rules can be used to help the organization to better achieve goals, remove obstacles,
reduce costly mistakes, improve communication, comply with legal requirements, and increase customer
loyalty.
Example: rent rules, payment rules, service rules, attendance rules, product rules, etc.

II. Categories of business rules

 Definitions of business terms: The most basic element of a business rule is the language used to express
it. The very definition of a term is itself a business rule that describes how people think and talk about
things.
 Facts relating terms to each other: The nature or operating structure of an organization can be described
in terms of the facts that relate terms to each other. To say that a customer can place an order is a business
rule. Facts can be documented as natural language sentences or as relationships, attributes, and
generalization structures in a graphical model.
 Constraints ("action assertions"): Every enterprise constrains behavior in some way, and this is closely
related to constraints on what data may or may not be updated. To prevent a record from being made is,
to prevent an action from taking place.
 Derivations: Business rules (including laws of nature) define how knowledge in one form may be
transformed into other knowledge, possibly in a different form.

1.5. Documentation of entity relationship diagram

1. Overview of data modeling:
A data model provides the details of information to be stored, and is of primary use when the final product is the
generation of computer software for an application. It is an abstract model that documents and organizes the
business data for communication between team members and is used as a plan for developing applications,
specifically how data are stored and accessed.
A data model is a way finding tool for both business and IT professionals, which uses a set of symbols and text
to precisely explain a subset of real information to improve communication within the organization and thereby
lead to a more flexible and stable application environment. It determines the structure of data or structured data.
Typical applications of data models include database models, design of information systems and enabling
exchange of data

2. Entity – Relationship Diagram (ERD)

An ERD, or entity relationship diagram, is a type of flowchart that helps you clearly visualize your database
design by showing how the "entities" in the system relate to one another. It is an abstract way to describe
adatabase. It usually starts with a relational database, which stores data in tables.
It is a visual representation of different data using conventions that describe how these data are related to each
other. For example, the elements writer, novel, and consumer may be described using ERD this way:

Figure 1.14 ERD

In the diagram, the elements inside rectangles are called entities while the items inside diamonds denote the
relationships between entities.
3. Entity relation diagram symbols

4. ER Diagrams Usage
ER is able to describe just about any system, ER diagrams are most often associated with complex databases that
are used in software engineering and IT networks.
In particular, ER diagrams are frequently used during the design stage of a development process in order to
identify different system elements and their relationships with each other. For example: an inventory software
used in a retail shop will have a database that monitors elements such as purchases, item, item type, item source
and item price. Rendering this information through an ER diagram would be something like this:
 Figure 1.14 ERD
In the diagram, the information inside the oval shapes is
attributes of a particular entity.
There are three basic elements in an ER Diagram: entity, attribute, relationship. There are more elements which
are based on the main elements. They are weak entity, multi-valued attribute, derived attribute, weak relationship
and recursive relationship.
 Entity: An entity can be a person, place, event, or object that is relevant to a given system. For example,
a school system may include students, teachers, major courses, subjects, fees, and other items. Represented
in ERD by a rectangle and named using singular nouns.
 Weak Entity: is an entity that depends on the existence of another entity. In more technical terms it can
defined as an entity that can’t be identified by its own attributes. It uses a foreign key combined with its
attributed to form the primary key.
Example: The order item will be meaningless without an order so it depends on the existence of order.

Figure 1.15 Weak entity

 Attribute: An attribute is a property, trait, or characteristic of an entity, relationship, or another attribute.

An entity can have as many attributes as necessary. Attributes are represented by oval shapes. (For
example: a student entity may have attributes such as Name, Roll no and Age)
Age

ID Section

Name Student Level

Figure 1.16 Attribute

 Composite attributes: attributes having their own specific attributes. For example: the attribute
“customer address” can have the attributes number, street, city, and state.

Figure 1.17 Composite attribute

 Multi-valued Attribute: If an attribute can have more than one value. It is important to note that this is
different to an attribute having its own attributes. For example, a teacher entity can have multiple subject
values.

Figure 1.18 Multi-valued attribute

 Derived Attribute: An attribute based on another attribute, found rarely in ER diagrams. For example,
for a circle the area can be derived from the radius.

Figure 1.19 Derived attribute

 Relationship: A relationship describes how entities interact. For example, the entity “carpenter” may be
related to the entity “table” by the relationship “builds” or “makes”. Relationships are represented by
diamond shapes and are labeled using verbs.

Figure 1.20 Relationships

 Recursive Relationship: If the same entity participates more than once in a relationship it is known as
recursive relationship. In the below example an employee can be a supervisor and be supervised, so there
is a recursive relationship.

Figure 1.21 Recursive relationships