CHAPTER 3

ENTITY
RELATIONSHIP
(ER)
MODELLING PREPARED BY:
DR MARJAN BINTI MOHD NOOR
LEARNING On completion of this chapter,
you should be able to:
OBJECTIVES
• The main characteristics of entity relationship components

• How relationships between entities are defined, refined, and

incorporated into the database design process

• How ERD components affect database design and

implementation

• That real-world database design often requires the

reconciliation of conflicting goals
THE ENTITY RELATIONSHIP (ER) MODEL

• ER model forms the basis of an ER diagram

• ERD represents conceptual database as viewed by end user

• ERDs depict database’s main components:

• Entities
• Attributes
• Relationships
 ENTITIES

In Chen and Crow’s Foot

Refers to entity set and not to
models, entity represented by
single entity occurrence
rectangle with entity’s name

Corresponds to table and not

Entity name, a noun, written
to row in relational
in capital letters
environment
 ATTRIBUTES

CHEN
NOTATION CROW’S FOOT
Attributes represented by NOTATION
CHARACTERISTICS ovals connected to entity
Attributes written
OF ENTITIES rectangle with a line.
in attribute box
Each oval contains the
name of attribute it below entity
represents rectangle
 REQUIRED ATTRIBUTES COMPOSITE
IDENTIFIERS
ATTRIBUTES (continued)
Primary key
Must have a composed of
value more than one
1 attribute 5
IDENTIFIERS
OPTIONAL
ATTRIBUTES DOMAIN One @ more
attributes that
May be left Set of
uniquely identify
empty possible
each entity
values for an
instance
attribute
2 4
3
 Before
deleting

After
deleting
 ATTRIBUTES
(continued)

Single-value
attribute
Composite Simple can have only a Multivalued
attribute attribute single value attributes

Exm; age
can be cannot be (simple), serial can have many
subdivided subdivided number values
(composite)
SE-08-02-189935
 ATTRIBUTES
(continued)

• M:N relationships and multivalued attributes

should not be implemented
• Create several new attributes for each of the original multivalued
attributes components
• Create new entity composed of original multivalued attributes
components

• Derived attribute: value may be calculated from other

attributes
• Need not be physically stored within database
 RELATIONSHIPS
Association between entities

Participants are entities that participate in a relationship

Relationships between entities always

operate in both directions

Relationship can be classified as 1:M

Relationship classification is difficult to establish if only

one side of the relationship is known
 CONNECTIVITIES
• Connectivity
• Describes the relationship classification

• Cardinality
• Expresses minimum and maximum number of entity
occurrences associated with one occurrence of
related entity

• Established by very concise statements known

as business rules
CONNECTIVITIES

CARDINALITY
(1,N)?

Exm: no upper limit to the

number of classes
a professor might teach
 Existence Dependence

• Existence dependence
• Entity exists in database only when it is associated with
another related entity occurrence

• Existence independence
• Entity can exist apart from one or more related entities
• Sometimes such an entity is referred to as a strong or
regular entity
 Relationship Strength
• Weak (non-identifying) relationships
• Exists if PK of related entity does not contain PK component of parent
entity

COURSE (CRS_CODE, DEPT_CODE, CRS_DESCRIPTION, CRS_CREDIT)

CLASS (CLASS_CODE, CRS_CODE, CLASS_SECTION, CLASS_TIME,

ROOM_CODE, PROF_NUM)
 Relationship Strength

• Strong (identifying) relationships

• Exists when PK of related entity contains PK component of parent
entity

COURSE (CRS_CODE, DEPT_CODE, CRS_DESCRIPTION,

CRS_CREDIT)

CLASS (CRS_CODE, CLASS_SECTION, CLASS_TIME, ROOM_CODE,

PROF_NUM)
 Weak Entities

• Weak entity meets two conditions

• Existence-dependent
• Primary key partially or totally derived from parent entity in
relationship

• Database designer determines whether an entity is

weak based on business rules
EMPLOYEE (EMP_NUM, EMP_LNAME, EMP_FNAME, EMP_INITIAL,
EMP_DOB, EMP_HIREDATE)

DEPENDENT (EMP_NUM, DEP_NUM, DEP_FNAME, DEP_DOB)

Relationship Participation

• Optional participation
• One entity occurrence does not require
corresponding entity occurrence in particular
relationship

• Mandatory participation
• One entity occurrence requires corresponding entity
occurrence in particular relationship
 Relationship Degree
Indicates number of entities or participants
associated with a relationship

• Unary relationship
• Association is maintained within single entity

• Binary relationship
• Two entities are associated

• Ternary relationship
• Three entities are associated
 Recursive Relationships
• Relationship can exist between occurrences of the same
entity set
• Naturally found within unary relationship
 Associative (Composite) Entities

• Also known as bridge entities

• Used to implement M:N relationships

• Composed of primary keys of each of the entities to be

connected

• May also contain additional attributes that play no role in

connective process
 Developing an ER Diagram
Database design is an iterative process

• Create detailed narrative of organization’s description of

operations
• Identify business rules based on description of operations
• Identify main entities and relationships from business rules
• Develop initial ERD
• Identify attributes and primary keys that adequately describe
entities
• Revise and review ERD
 Database Design Challenges:
Conflicting Goals
• Database designers must make design compromises
• Conflicting goals: design standards, processing speed, information
requirements

• Important to meet logical requirements and design conventions

• Design of little value unless it delivers all specified query and

reporting requirements

• Some design and implementation problems do not yield “clean”

solutions
 Summary
Entity relationship (ER) model

• Uses ERD to represent conceptual database as viewed by end user

• ERM’s main components:

• Entities
• Relationships
• Attributes

• Includes connectivity and cardinality notations

 Summary
(continued)

• Connectivities and cardinalities are based on business rules

• M:N relationship is valid at conceptual level

• Must be mapped to a set of 1:M relationships

• ERDs may be based on many different ERMs

• Database designers are often forced to make design

compromises
THANK YOU