THE ENHANCED ER

(EER) MODEL

CHAPTER 8 (6/E)
CHAPTER 4 (5/E)
LECTURE OUTLINE
 Extending the ER model
• Created to design more accurate database schemas
• Reflect the data properties and constraints more precisely
• Address more complex requirements
• Subclasses, Superclasses, and Inheritance
• Specialization and Generalization
• Modeling of UNION Types Using Categories

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SPECIALIZATION AND INHERITANCE
 Specialization
• Process of defining a set of subclasses of an entity type
• Defined on the basis of some distinguishing characteristic of the
entities in the superclass
 Describing the relationship
• Superclass/subclass or Class/subclass
• Supertype/subtype or Type/subtype
 Subclass can define:
• Specific attributes
• Specific relationship types
 Subclass can be a subclass wrt more than one superclass
 Type inheritance
• Subclass entity has all attributes and participates in all relationships
of superclass
• Multiple inheritance if more than one superclass

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GENERALIZATION
 Generalization
• Process of defining a more general entity type from given entity types
 Reverse process of specialization
 Generalize into a single superclass
• Original entity types are specialized subclasses
• Entities in generalization must all come from subclasses

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SPECIALIZED ENTITIES
 Every technician/secretary/engineer is
EMPLOYEE
an employee.
SECRETARY
 Not every employee of superclass
 e8
 e7 must be in a subclass (unless specified
 e2 as generalization).
 e1
 All properties of employee (attributes
MANAGER and relationships) are inherited by
 e5  e3
TECHNICIAN
 e6
specialized subclasses.
 e4
 e10
 Specialized entities might have
 e9 additional attributes and be involved in
additional relationships.
ENGINEER
 Subclasses may be disjoint or
overlapping.

5
 CONSTRAINTS ON SUBCLASSES
 Disjointness constraint
• Specifies that the subclasses of the specialization must be disjoint
 Completeness constraint
• Specifies that every superclass entity must be in a subclass
• Required of generalization
 Disjointness and completeness constraints are independent constraints

6
EER DIAGRAM WITH SUBCLASSES

7
REFINING CONCEPTUAL SCHEMAS
 Using specialization
• Starting with entity type, define subclasses by successive
specialization
• Top-down conceptual refinement
 Using generalization
• Starting with entity type, define superclasses by successive
generalization
• Bottom-up conceptual synthesis

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MODELING WITH UNION TYPES
• Union type or category
• Represents a single superclass/subclass relationship with more
than one superclass
• Subclass represents a collection of objects that is a subset of the
UNION of distinct entity types
• Attribute inheritance works more selectively
• Category can be total or partial
 Some modeling methodologies do not have union types
• Usually (always?) clearer to use specification/generalization

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UNION TYPES

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REWRITING UNION AS SPECIALIZATION
BANK BANK
PERSON COMPANY PERSON COMPANY
⋃
⋃ ⋃
oBANK
oPERSON oCOMPANY
⋃ d

⋃ ⋂
OWNER OWNER

OWNS OWNS

REGISTERED VEHICLE REGISTERED VEHICLE

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13
DESIGN CHOICES
 Many specializations/generalizations can be defined to make the
conceptual model accurate
• Constrain as disjoint/overlapping or total/partial as needed
• Driven by rules in miniworld being modeled
 If all the subclasses of a specialization/generalization have few
specific attributes and no specific relationships
• Can be merged into the superclass C
• Include in C one or more “type” attributes that specify the (virtual)
subclasses to which each entity belongs
 Union types should generally be avoided

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LECTURE SUMMARY
 Enhanced ER or EER model
• Extensions to ER model that improve its representational
capabilities
• Subclass and its superclass
• Category or union type
• EER diagrams

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