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4 views

Ddm

Uploaded by

sathishjtj89
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Enhanced ER Model

Today the complexity of the data is increasing so it


becomes more and more difficult to use the traditional
ER model for database modeling. To reduce this
complexity of modeling we have to make improvements
or enhancements to the existing ER model to make it
able to handle the complex application in a better way.

Enhanced entity-relationship diagrams are


advanced database diagrams very similar to regular
ER diagrams which represent the requirements and
complexities of complex databases.

It Is a diagrammatic technique for displaying the


Sub Class and Super Class; Specialization and
Generalization; Union or Category; Aggregation etc.
Generalization and Specialization:

These are very common relationships found in real


entities. However, this kind of relationship was
added later as an enhanced extension to the
classical ER model. Specialized classes are often
called subclass while a generalized class is called a
superclass, probably inspired by object-oriented
programming. A sub-class is best understood by “IS-
A analysis”. The following statements hopefully
make some sense to your mind “Technician IS-A
Employee”, and “Laptop IS-A Computer”.

An entity is a specialized type/class of another


entity. For example, a Technician is a special
Employee in a university system Faculty is a special
class of Employees. We call this phenomenon
generalization/specialization. In the example here
Employee is a generalized entity class while the
Technician and Faculty are specialized classes of
Employee.
Example:
This example instance of “sub-class” relationships.
Here we have four sets of employees: Secretary,
Technician, and Engineer. The employee is a super-
class of the rest three sets of individual sub-class is
a subset of Employee set.

Enhanced ER model of above example

Total or Partial : A sub-classing relationship


is total if every super-class entity is to be
associated with some sub-class entity,
otherwise partial. Sub-class “job type based
employee category” is partial sub-classing –
not necessary every employee is one of
(secretary, engineer, and technician), i.e.
union of these three types is a proper
subset of all employees. Whereas other sub-
classing “Salaried Employee AND Hourly
Employee” is total; the union of entities
from sub-classes is equal to the total
employee set, i.e. every employee
necessarily has to be one of them.
Overlapped or Disjoint – If an entity from a
super-set can be related (can occur) in
multiple sub-class sets, then it is
overlapped sub-classing, otherwise disjoint.
Both the examples: job-type based and
salaries/hourly employee sub-classing are
disjoint.
You might see some confusion in Sub-class
and UNION; consider an example in above
figure Vehicle is super-class of CAR and Truck;
this is very much the correct example of the
subclass as well but here use it differently we
are saying RTO Registered vehicle is UNION of
Car and Vehicle, they do not inherit any
attribute of Vehicle, attributes of car and truck
are altogether independent set, where is in sub-
classing situation car and truck would be
inheriting the attribute of vehicle class.

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