Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B.

Navathe
 CHAPTER 4

Enhanced Entity-Relationship
(EER) Modeling

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 1- 2

Chapter Outline
 EER stands for Enhanced ER or Extended ER
 EER Model Concepts
 Includes all modeling concepts of basic ER
 Additional concepts:
 subclasses/superclasses
 specialization/generalization
 categories (UNION types)
 attribute and relationship inheritance
 Constraints on Specialization/Generalization
 The additional EER concepts are used to model
applications more completely and more accurately
 EER includes some object-oriented concepts, such as
inheritance
 Knowledge Representation and Ontology Concepts

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 3

Subclasses and Superclasses (1)
 An entity type may have additional meaningful
subgroupings of its entities
 Example: EMPLOYEE may be further grouped into:
 SECRETARY, ENGINEER, TECHNICIAN, …
 Based on the EMPLOYEE’s Job
 MANAGER
 EMPLOYEEs who are managers (the role they play)
 SALARIED_EMPLOYEE, HOURLY_EMPLOYEE
 Based on the EMPLOYEE’s method of pay
 EER diagrams extend ER diagrams to represent these
additional subgroupings, called subclasses or subtypes

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 4

Subclasses and Superclasses

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 5

Subclasses and Superclasses (2)
 Each of these subgroupings is a subset of EMPLOYEE
entities
 Each is called a subclass of EMPLOYEE
 EMPLOYEE is the superclass for each of these
subclasses
 These are called superclass/subclass relationships:
 EMPLOYEE/SECRETARY
 EMPLOYEE/TECHNICIAN
 EMPLOYEE/MANAGER
 …

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 6

Subclasses and Superclasses (3)
 These are also called IS-A relationships
 SECRETARY IS-A EMPLOYEE, TECHNICIAN IS-A
EMPLOYEE, ….
 Note: An entity that is member of a subclass represents
the same real-world entity as some member of the
superclass:
 The subclass member is the same entity in a distinct
specific role
 An entity cannot exist in the database merely by being a
member of a subclass; it must also be a member of the
superclass
 A member of the superclass can be optionally included as a
member of any number of its subclasses

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 7

Subclasses and Superclasses (4)
 Examples:
 A salaried employee who is also an engineer belongs to the
two subclasses:
 ENGINEER, and
 SALARIED_EMPLOYEE
 A salaried employee who is also an engineering manager
belongs to the three subclasses:
 MANAGER,
 ENGINEER, and
 SALARIED_EMPLOYEE
 It is not necessary that every entity in a superclass be a
member of some subclass

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 8

Representing Specialization in EER
Diagrams

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 9

Attribute Inheritance in Superclass /
Subclass Relationships
 An entity that is member of a subclass inherits
 All attributes of the entity as a member of the
superclass
 All relationships of the entity as a member of the
superclass
 Example:
 In the previous slide, SECRETARY (as well as
TECHNICIAN and ENGINEER) inherit the
attributes Name, SSN, …, from EMPLOYEE
 Every SECRETARY entity will have values for the
inherited attributes

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 10

Specialization (1)
 Specialization is the process of defining a set of
subclasses of a superclass
 The set of subclasses is based upon some
distinguishing characteristics of the entities in the
superclass
 Example: {SECRETARY, ENGINEER,
TECHNICIAN} is a specialization of EMPLOYEE
based upon job type.
 Example: MANAGER is a specialization of
EMPLOYEE based on the role the employee plays
 May have several specializations of the same
superclass
Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 11
Specialization (2)
 Example: Another specialization of EMPLOYEE based on
method of pay is {SALARIED_EMPLOYEE,
HOURLY_EMPLOYEE}.
 Superclass/subclass relationships and specialization can be
diagrammatically represented in EER diagrams
 Attributes of a subclass are called specific or local
attributes.
 For example, the attribute TypingSpeed of SECRETARY
 The subclass can also participate in specific relationship
types.
 For example, a relationship BELONGS_TO of
HOURLY_EMPLOYEE

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 12

Specialization (3)

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 13

Generalization
 Generalization is the reverse of the specialization process
 Several classes with common features are generalized
into a superclass;
 original classes become its subclasses
 Example: CAR, TRUCK generalized into VEHICLE;
 both CAR, TRUCK become subclasses of the superclass
VEHICLE.
 We can view {CAR, TRUCK} as a specialization of
VEHICLE
 Alternatively, we can view VEHICLE as a generalization of
CAR and TRUCK

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 14

Generalization (2)

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 15

Constraints on Specialization and
Generalization (3)

 Two basic constraints can apply to a

specialization/generalization:
 Disjointness Constraint:
 Completeness Constraint:

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 22

Constraints on Specialization and
Generalization (4)

 Disjointness Constraint:
 Specifies that the subclasses of the specialization
must be disjoint:
 an entity can be a member of at most one of the
subclasses of the specialization
 Specified by d in EER diagram
 If not disjoint, specialization is overlapping:
 that is the same entity may be a member of more
than one subclass of the specialization
 Specified by o in EER diagram

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 23

Constraints on Specialization and
Generalization (5)

 Completeness (Exhaustiveness) Constraint:

 Total specifies that every entity in the superclass
must be a member of some subclass in the
specialization/generalization
 Shown in EER diagrams by a double line
 Partial allows an entity not to belong to any of the
subclasses
 Shown in EER diagrams by a single line

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 24

Constraints on Specialization and
Generalization (6)

 Hence, we have four types of

specialization/generalization:
 Disjoint, total
 Disjoint, partial
 Overlapping, total
 Overlapping, partial
 Note: Generalization usually is total because the
superclass is derived from the subclasses.

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 25

Example of disjoint partial Specialization

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 26

Example of overlapping total Specialization

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 27

Specialization/Generalization Hierarchies,
Lattices & Shared Subclasses (1)

 A subclass may itself have further subclasses

specified on it
 forms a hierarchy or a lattice
 Hierarchy has a constraint that every subclass
has only one superclass (called single
inheritance); this is basically a tree structure
 In a lattice, a subclass can be subclass of more
than one superclass (called multiple
inheritance)

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 28

Shared Subclass “Engineering_Manager”

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 29

Specialization / Generalization Lattice
Example (UNIVERSITY)

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 32

Categories (UNION TYPES) (1)
 All of the superclass/subclass relationships we have seen
thus far have a single superclass
 A shared subclass is a subclass in:
 more than one distinct superclass/subclass relationships
 each relationships has a single superclass
 shared subclass leads to multiple inheritance
 In some cases, we need to model a single
superclass/subclass relationship with more than one
superclass
 Superclasses can represent different entity types
 Such a subclass is called a category or UNION TYPE

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 33

Categories (UNION TYPES) (2)
 Example: In a database for vehicle registration, a vehicle
owner can be a PERSON, a BANK (holding a lien on a
vehicle) or a COMPANY.
 A category (UNION type) called OWNER is created to
represent a subset of the union of the three superclasses
COMPANY, BANK, and PERSON
 A category member must exist in at least one (typically
just one) of its superclasses
 Difference from shared subclass, which is a:
 subset of the intersection of its superclasses
 shared subclass member must exist in all of its
superclasses

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 34

Two categories (UNION types):
OWNER, REGISTERED_VEHICLE

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 35

Summary
 Introduced the EER model concepts
 Class/subclass relationships

 Specialization and generalization

 Inheritance

 Constraints on EER schemas

 These augment the basic ER model concepts introduced
in Chapter 3
 EER diagrams and alternative notations were presented
 Knowledge Representation and Ontologies were
introduced and compared with Data Modeling

Copyright © 2016 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 4- 48

Figure 9.1. The ER conceptual schema diagram for
COMPANY database

Examples from: Fundamentals of Database Systems by

Elmasri & Navathe, 7th Edition
Figure 9.2. Result of mapping the COMPANY ER schema into
a relational database schema

Examples from: Fundamentals of Database Systems by

Elmasri & Navathe, 7th Edition