Unit-1 Introduction to Database Management

Systems and ER Model

Introduction, Purpose of Database Systems, Database-System
Applications, View of Data, Database
Languages, Database System Structure, Data Models,
Database Design and ER Model: Entity,
Attributes, Relationships, Constraints, Keys, Design Process,
Entity-Relationship Model, ER
Diagram, Design Issues, Extended E-R Features, converting ER
and EER diagram into tables.

Pradnya Mehta
 ENTITY-RELATIONSHIP MODEL

Design Process
Modeling
Constraints
E-R Diagram
Design Issues
Weak Entity Sets
Extended E-R Features
Design of the Bank Database
Reduction to Relation Schemas
Database Design
UML
 DESIGN PHASES

The initial phase of database design is to characterize fully

the data needs of the prospective database users.
Next, the designer chooses a data model and, by applying
the concepts of the chosen data model, translates these
requirements into a conceptual schema of the
database.
A fully developed conceptual schema also indicates the
functional requirements of the enterprise. In a
“specification of functional requirements”, users
describe the kinds of operations (or transactions) that
will be performed on the data.
 DESIGN PHASES (CONT.)

The process of moving from an abstract data model to the

implementation of the database proceeds in two final
design phases.
Logical Design – Deciding on the database schema.
Database design requires that we find a “good”
collection of relation schemas.
▪ Business decision – What attributes should we record in the
database?
▪ Computer Science decision – What relation schemas
should we have and how should the attributes be
distributed among the various relation schemas?
Physical Design – Deciding on the physical layout of
the database
DESIGN APPROACHES

Entity Relationship Model (covered in this chapter)

▪ Models an enterprise as a collection of entities and relationships
▪ Entity: a “thing” or “object” in the enterprise that is distinguishable
from other objects
▪ Described by a set of attributes
▪ Relationship: an association among several entities
▪ Represented diagrammatically by an entity-relationship diagram:
Normalization Theory (Chapter 8)
▪ Formalize what designs are bad, and test for them
OUTLINE OF THE ER MODEL
ER MODEL -- DATABASE MODELING
The ER data mode was developed to facilitate database
design by allowing specification of an enterprise schema
that represents the overall logical structure of a database.
The ER model is very useful in mapping the meanings and
interactions of real-world enterprises onto a conceptual
schema. Because of this usefulness, many database-
design tools draw on concepts from the ER model.
The ER data model employs three basic concepts:
▪ entity sets,
▪ relationship sets,
▪ attributes.
The ER model also has an associated diagrammatic
representation, the ER diagram, which can express the
overall logical structure of a database graphically.
ENTITY SETS
An entity is an object that exists and is distinguishable
from other objects.
▪Example: specific person, company, event, plant
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
An entity is represented by a set of attributes; i.e.,
descriptive properties possessed by all members of
an entity set.
▪ Example:
instructor = (ID, name, street, city, salary )
course= (course_id, title, credits)
A subset of the attributes form a primary key of the
entity set; i.e., uniquely identifiying each member of
the set.
ENTITY SETS -- INSTRUCTOR AND STUDENT

instructor_ID instructor_name student-ID student_name

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
RELATIONSHIP SET ADVISOR
 RELATIONSHIP SETS (CONT.)
An attribute can also be associated with 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
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.)
4 Example: students work on research projects under the guidance
of an instructor.
4 relationship proj_guide is a ternary relationship between instructor,
student, and project
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 to
one many
Note: Some elements in A and B may not be mapped
to any
elements in the other set
MAPPING CARDINALITIES

Many to Many to
one many
Note: Some elements in A and B may not be mapped
to any
elements in the other set
COMPLEX ATTRIBUTES
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
Domain – the set of permitted values for each attribute
COMPOSITE ATTRIBUTES
REDUNDANT ATTRIBUTES
Suppose we have entity sets:
▪ instructor, with attributes: ID, name, dept_name, salary
▪ department, with attributes: dept_name, building, budget
We model the fact that each instructor has an
associated department using a relationship set
inst_dept
The attribute dept_name appears in both entity sets.
Since it is the primary key for the entity set
department, it replicates information present in the
relationship and is therefore redundant in the entity
set instructor and needs to be removed.
BUT: when converting back to tables, in some cases the
attribute gets reintroduced, as we will see later.
WEAK ENTITY SETS
Consider a section entity, which is uniquely identified by a
course_id, semester, year, and sec_id.
Clearly, section entities are related to course entities. Suppose
we create a relationship set sec_course between entity sets
section and course.
Note that the information in sec_course is redundant, since
section already has an attribute course_id, which identifies
the course with which the section is related.
One option to deal with this redundancy is to get rid of the
relationship sec_course; however, by doing so the
relationship between section and course becomes implicit in
an attribute, which is not desirable.
WEAK ENTITY SETS (CONT.)
An alternative way to deal with this redundancy is to not store
the attribute course_id in the section entity and to only
store the remaining attributes section_id, year, and
semester. However, the entity set section then does not
have enough attributes to identify a particular section
entity uniquely; although each section entity is distinct,
sections for different courses may share the same
section_id, year, and semester.
To deal with this problem, we treat the relationship sec_course
as a special relationship that provides extra information, in
this case, the course_id, required to identify section
entities uniquely.
The notion of weak entity set formalizes the above intuition. A
weak entity set is one whose existence is dependent on
another entity, called its identifying entity; instead of
associating a primary key with a weak entity, we use the
identifying entity, along with extra attributes called
discriminator to uniquely identify a weak entity. An entity
set that is not a weak entity set is termed a strong entity
set.
WEAK ENTITY SETS (CONT.)
Every weak entity must be associated with an identifying
entity; that is, the weak entity set is said to be
existence dependent on the identifying entity set.
The identifying entity set is said to own the weak
entity set that it identifies. The relationship
associating the weak entity set with the identifying
entity set is called the identifying relationship.
Note that the relational schema we eventually create
from the entity set section does have the attribute
course_id, for reasons that will become clear later,
even though we have dropped the attribute course_id
from the entity set section.
E-R DIAGRAMS
ENTITY SETS

● Entities can be represented graphically as follows:

• Rectangles represent entity sets.
• Attributes listed inside entity rectangle
• Underline indicates primary key attributes
RELATIONSHIP SETS

● Diamonds represent relationship sets.

RELATIONSHIP SETS WITH ATTRIBUTES
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.
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 between an instructor and a student :

▪ 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
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,
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
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
 TOTAL AND PARTIAL PARTICIPATION
● Total participation (indicated by double line): every entity
in the entity set participates in at least one relationship in
the relationship set

participation of student in advisor relation is total

4 every student must have an associated instructor
● Partial participation: some entities may not participate in
any relationship in the relationship set
● Example: participation of instructor in advisor is partial
NOTATION FOR EXPRESSING MORE COMPLEX
CONSTRAINTS

● A line may have an associated minimum and maximum

cardinality, shown in the form l..h, where l is the minimum
and h the maximum cardinality
● A minimum value of 1 indicates total participation.
● A maximum value of 1 indicates that the entity
participates in at most one relationship
● A maximum value of * indicates no limit.

Instructor can advise 0 or more students. A student

must have 1 advisor; cannot have multiple advisors
NOTATION TO EXPRESS ENTITY WITH COMPLEX
ATTRIBUTES
EXPRESSING WEAK ENTITY SETS

In E-R diagrams, a weak entity set is depicted via a double

rectangle.
We underline the discriminator of a weak entity set with a
dashed line.
The relationship set connecting the weak entity set to the
identifying strong entity set is depicted by a double
diamond.
Primary key for section – (course_id, sec_id, semester, year)
E-R DIAGRAM FOR A UNIVERSITY ENTERPRISE
REDUCTION TO RELATION SCHEMAS
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.
REPRESENTING ENTITY SETS
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 )

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)

REPRESENTATION OF ENTITY SETS WITH COMPOSITE
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
(name_first_name could be first_name)
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)
REPRESENTATION OF ENTITY SETS WITH 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)
 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
 REDUNDANCY OF SCHEMAS (CONT.)

For one-to-one relationship sets, either side can be

chosen to act as the “many” side
▪ That is, an 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
 REDUNDANCY OF SCHEMAS (CONT.)

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
ADVANCED TOPICS
NON-BINARY RELATIONSHIP SETS

Most relationship sets are binary

There are occasions when it is more convenient to
represent relationships as non-binary.
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
For exampe, 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.
▪ For example, 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
 SPECIALIZATION
Top-down design process; we designate sub-groupings
within an entity set that are distinctive from other
entities in the set.
These sub-groupings 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.,
instructor “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
Overlapping – employee and student
Disjoint – instructor and secretary
Total and partial
REPRESENTING SPECIALIZATION VIA
SCHEMAS
Method 1:
▪ Form a schema for the higher-level entity
▪ Form a schema for each lower-level entity set, include primary key
of higher-level entity set and local attributes

schema attributes
person ID, name, street, city
student ID, tot_cred
employee getting information
▪ Drawback: ID, salary
about, an employee requires
accessing two relations, the one corresponding to the low-level
schema and the one corresponding to the high-level schema
 REPRESENTING SPECIALIZATION AS SCHEMAS
(CONT.)

Method 2:
▪ Form a schema for each entity set with all local and inherited
attributes

schema attributes
person ID, name, street, city
student ID, name, street, city, tot_cred
employee ID, name, street, city, salary

▪ Drawback: name, street and city may be stored redundantly for

people who are both students and employees
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.
DESIGN CONSTRAINTS ON A
SPECIALIZATION/GENERALIZATION

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
Partial generalization is the default. We can specify total
generalization in an ER diagram by adding the keyword
total in the diagram and drawing a dashed line from the
keyword to the corresponding hollow arrow-head to which
it applies (for a total generalization), or to the set of
hollow arrow-heads to which it applies (for an overlapping
generalization).
The student generalization is total: All student entities must
be either graduate or undergraduate. Because the higher-
level entity set arrived at through generalization is
generally composed of only those entities in the lower-
level entity sets, the completeness constraint for a
generalized higher-level entity set is usually total
 AGGREGATION

● Consider the ternary relationship proj_guide, which we saw

earlier
● Suppose we want to record evaluations of a student by a
guide on a project
AGGREGATION (CONT.)
Relationship sets eval_for and proj_guide represent
overlapping information
▪ Every eval_for relationship corresponds to a proj_guide
relationship
▪ However, some proj_guide relationships may not correspond to
any eval_for relationships
▪ So we can’t discard the proj_guide relationship
Eliminate this redundancy via aggregation
▪ Treat relationship as an abstract entity
▪ Allows relationships between relationships
▪ Abstraction of relationship into new entity
 AGGREGATION (CONT.)

Eliminate this redundancy via aggregation without introducing

redundancy, the following diagram represents:
▪ A student is guided by a particular instructor on a particular project
▪ A student, instructor, project combination may have an associated
evaluation
REPRESENTING AGGREGATION VIA
SCHEMAS

● To represent aggregation, create a schema containing

● Primary key of the aggregated relationship,
● The primary key of the associated entity set
● Any descriptive attributes
● In our example:
● The schema eval_for is:
eval_for (s_ID, project_id, i_ID, evaluation_id)
● The schema proj_guide is redundant.
 E S
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ENTITIES VS. ATTRIBUTES

Use of entity sets vs. attributes

Use of phone as an entity allows extra information about phone

numbers (plus multiple phone numbers)
 ENTITIES VS. RELATIONSHIP SETS

Use of entity sets vs. relationship sets

Possible guideline is to designate a relationship set to
describe an action that occurs between entities

Placement of relationship attributes

For example, attribute date as attribute of advisor

or as attribute of student
 BINARY VS. NON-BINARY RELATIONSHIPS

Although it is possible to replace any non-binary (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.
Some relationships that appear to be non-binary may be
better represented using binary relationships
▪ For example, 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 known)
▪ But there are some relationships that are naturally non-binary
▪ Example: proj_guide
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 an identifying attribute for E and 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
E-R DESIGN DECISIONS
The use of an attribute or entity set to represent an object.
Whether a real-world concept is best expressed by an entity
set or a relationship set.
The use of a ternary relationship versus a pair of binary
relationships.
The use of a strong or weak entity set.
The use of specialization/generalization – contributes to
modularity in the design.
The use of aggregation – can treat the aggregate entity set as
a single unit without concern for the details of its internal
structure.
SUMMARY OF SYMBOLS USED IN E-R NOTATION
SYMBOLS USED IN E-R NOTATION
(CONT.)
ALTERNATIVE ER NOTATIONS
Chen, IDE1FX, …
ALTERNATIVE ER NOTATIONS

Chen IDE1FX (Crows feet

notation)
UML
UML: Unified Modeling Language
UML has many components to graphically model different
aspects of an entire software system
UML Class Diagrams correspond to E-R Diagram, but several
differences.
ER VS. UML CLASS DIAGRAMS

*Note reversal of position in cardinality constraint

depiction
ER VS. UML CLASS DIAGRAMS
ER Diagram Equivalent in
Notation UML

*Generalization can use merged or separate arrows

independent
of disjoint/overlapping
UML CLASS DIAGRAMS (CONT.)
Binary relationship sets are represented in UML by just
drawing a line connecting the entity sets. The relationship
set name is written adjacent to the line.
The role played by an entity set in a relationship set may also
be specified by writing the role name on the line, adjacent
to the entity set.
The relationship set name may alternatively be written in a
box, along with attributes of the relationship set, and the
box is connected, using a dotted line, to the line depicting
the relationship set.
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