Chapter 7: Entity-Relationship Model

Chapter 7: 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 model 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.)
 Example: students work on research projects under the
guidance of an instructor.
 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 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 Many to many

one
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

 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
EXTENDED ER FEATURES
 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
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 ID, salary

Drawback: getting information 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.
The database designer may have first identified:
instructor entity set with attributes instructor id, instructor name, instructor salary,
and rank.
secretary entity set with attributes secretary id, secretary name, secretary salary,
and hours per week.
There are similarities between the instructor entity set and the secretary entity
set namely, the identifier, name, and salary attributes.
This commonality can be expressed by generalization, which is a containment
relationship that exists between a higher-level entity set and one or more lower-
level entity sets.
In our example, employee is the higher-level entity set and instructor and
secretary are lower-level entity sets. To create a generalization, the attributes
must be given a common name and represented with the higher-level entity
person.
 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.
Design Issues
 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
 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.)