Scribd
Upload
24 views

Design Issues Ermodel.docx

The document discusses key issues in ER diagram design, including the distinction between entity sets and attributes, and the choice between entity sets and relationship sets. It emphasizes the complexity of n-ary relationships and suggests converting them into binary relationships for simplicity. Additionally, it highlights the importance of placing relationship attributes based on cardinality ratios in DBMS.

Uploaded by

jaswanth.r090
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
24 views

Design Issues Ermodel.docx

The document discusses key issues in ER diagram design, including the distinction between entity sets and attributes, and the choice between entity sets and relationship sets. It emphasizes the complexity of n-ary relationships and suggests converting them into binary relationships for simplicity. Additionally, it highlights the importance of placing relationship attributes based on cardinality ratios in DBMS.

Uploaded by

jaswanth.r090
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

DBMS – ER Design Issues

Here are some of the issues that can occur while ER diagram design process:

1. Choosing Entity Set vs Attributes


Here we will discuss how choosing an entity set vs an attribute can change the
whole ER design semantics. To understand this lets take an example, let’s say we
have an entity set Student with attributes such as student-name and student-id.
Now we can say that the student-id itself can be an entity with the attributes like
student-class and student-section.

Now if we compare the two cases we discussed above, in the first case we can say
that the student can have only one student id, however in the second case when we
chose student id as an entity it implied that a student can have more than one
student id.

2. Choosing Entity Set vs. Relationship Sets


It is hard to decide that an object can be best represented by an entity set or
relationship set. To comprehend and decide the perfect choice between these two
(entity vs relationship), the user needs to understand whether the entity would need
a new relationship if a requirement arise in future, if this is the case then it is better
to choose entity set rather than relationship set.

Let’s take an example to understand it better: A person takes a loan from a bank,
here we have two entities person and bank and their relationship is loan. This is
fine until there is a need to disburse a joint loan, in such case a new relationship
needs to be created to define the relationship between the two individuals who
have taken joint loan. In this scenario, it is better to choose loan as an entity set
rather than a relationship set.

3. Choosing Binary vs n-ary Relationship Sets


In most cases, the relationships described in an ER diagrams are binary.
The n-ary relationships are those where entity sets are more than two, if the entity
sets are only two, their relationship can be termed as binary relationship.

The n-ary relationships can make ER design complex, however the good news is
that we can convert and represent any n-ary relationship using multiple binary
relationships.
This may sound confusing so lets take an example to understand how we can
convert an n-ary relationship to multiple binary relationships. Now lets say we
have to describe a relationship between four family members: father, mother, son
and daughter. This can easily be represented in forms of multiple binary
relationships, father-mother relationship as “spouse”, son and daughter relationship
as “siblings” and father and mother relationship with their child as “child”.

4. Placing Relationship Attributes


The cardinality ratio in DBMS can help us determine in which scenarios we need
to place relationship attributes. It is recommended to represent the attributes of one
to one or one to many relationship sets with any participating entity sets rather
than a relationship set.

For example, if an entity cannot be determined as a separate entity rather it is


represented by the combination of participating entity sets. In such case it is better
to associate these entities to many-to-many relationship sets.

You might also like