Entity-Relationship Model

Design Process Modeling Constraints E-R Diagram Design Issues Weak Entity Sets Extended E-R Features

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

Entity Sets customer and loan

((customer_id , customer_name customer_ street, customer_ city), (loan_number, amount))

Relationship Sets
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

Relationship Set Borrower

Relationship Sets (Cont.)

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 accessdate

Degree of a Relationship Set

Refers to number of entity sets that participate in a relationship set. Relationship sets that involve two entity sets are binary (or degree two). Generally, most relationship sets in a database system are binary. Relationship sets may involve more than two entity sets.

Example: Suppose employees of a bank may have jobs (responsibilities) at multiple branches, with different jobs at different branches. Then there is a ternary relationship set between entity sets employee, job, and branch
Relationships between more than two entity sets are rare. Most relationships are binary. (More on this later.)

Attributes
An entity is represented by a set of attributes, that is descriptive properties possessed by all members of an entity set. Example: customer = (customer_id, customer_name, customer_street, customer_city ) loan = (loan_number, amount )

Domain the set of permitted values for each attribute Attribute types: Simple and composite attributes. Single-valued and multi-valued attributes Example: multivalued attribute: phone_numbers Derived attributes Can be computed from other attributes Example: age, given date_of_birth

Composite Attributes

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

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

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

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.
Example: 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 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

Rectangles represent entity sets. Diamonds represent relationship sets. Lines link attributes to entity sets and entity sets to relationship sets. Ellipses represent attributes

Double ellipses represent multivalued attributes. Dashed ellipses denote derived attributes.

Underline indicates primary key attributes (will study later)

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

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 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 (including 0) 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

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 loan in borrower is total

every loan must have a customer associated to it via borrower

Partial participation: some entities may not participate in any relationship in the

relationship set

Example: participation of customer in borrower is partial

Alternative Notation for Cardinality Limits

Cardinality limits can also express participation constraints

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

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 nary relationship set shows more clearly that several entities participate in a single relationship. Placement of relationship attributes

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: works_on

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

Converting Non-Binary Relationships (Cont.)

Also need to translate constraints
Translating all constraints may not be possible There may be instances in the translated schema that cannot correspond to any instance of R
Exercise: add constraints to the relationships RA, RB and RC to ensure that a newly created entity corresponds to exactly one entity in each of entity sets A, B and C

We can avoid creating an identifying attribute by making E a weak entity set (described shortly) identified by the three relationship sets

Mapping Cardinalities affect ER Design

Can make access-date an attribute of account, instead of a relationship attribute, if

each account can have only one customer

That is, the relationship from account to customer is many to one, or equivalently, customer to account is one to many

Weak Entity Sets

Entity types that do not have key attributes of their own are called weak entity types. Entities belonging to a weak entity type are identified by being related to specific entities from another entity type in combination with some of their attribute values. We call this other entity type the identifying or owner entity type , and we call the relationship type that relates a weak entity type to its owner the identifying relationship of the weak entity type . A weak entity type always has a total participation constraint (existence dependency) with respect to its identifying relationship, because a weak entity cannot be identified without an owner entity. A weak entity type normally has a partial key, which is the set of attributes that can uniquely identify weak entities that are related to the same owner entity .

Example
Consider the entity type DEPENDENT, related to EMPLOYEE, which is used to keep track of the dependents of each employee via a 1:N relationship . The attributes of DEPENDENT are Name (the first name of the dependent), BirthDate, Sex, and Relationship (to the employee). Two dependents of two distinct employees may, by chance, have the same values for Name, BirthDate, Sex, and Relationship, but they are still distinct entities. They are identified as distinct entities only after determining the particular employee entity to which each dependent is related. Each employee entity is said to own the dependent entities that are related to it. A weak entity type normally has a partial key, which is the set of attributes that can uniquely identify weak entities that are related to the same owner entity . In our example, if we assume that no two dependents of the same employee ever have the same first name, the attribute Name of DEPENDENT is the partial key.

Weak Entity Sets (Cont.)

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 (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 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.

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

Extended E-R Features: 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

Extended ER Features: 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 (Cont.)

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
Example: 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 (Cont.)

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 lowerlevel entity sets partial: an entity need not belong to one of the lower-level entity sets

Summary of Symbols Used in E-R Notation

Summary of Symbols (Cont.)

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 (Cont.)
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 cant 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