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Chapter 7: Entity-Relationship Model

Database System Concepts, 6th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.2 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Modeling
 A database can be modeled as:
 a collection of entities,
 relationship among entities.
 An entity is an object that exists and is distinguishable from
other objects.
 Example: specific person, company, event, plant
 Entities have attributes
 Example: people have names and addresses
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.3 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Entity Sets instructor and student

ID name ID name

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.4 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Keys

 A super key of an entity set is a set of one or more

attributes whose values uniquely determine each entity.
 A candidate key of an entity set is a minimal super key
 ID is candidate key of instructor
 course_id is candidate key of course
 Although several candidate keys may exist, one of the
candidate keys is selected to be the primary key.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.5 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.6 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Relationship Set advisor

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.7 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 E-R Diagrams

 Rectangles represent entity sets.

 Diamonds represent relationship sets.
 Attributes listed inside entity rectangle
 Underline indicates primary key attributes

Note: ER diagram notation in 6th edition of Database System

Concepts changed from earlier editions; now based on UML class
diagram notation with some modifications.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.8 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Relationship Sets With Attributes
 An attribute can also be property of a relationship set.
 For instance, the advisor relationship set between entity sets
instructor and student may have the attribute date
 E.g. date may track when the student started being
associated with the advisor

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.9 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Relationship Sets with Attributes

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.10 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Attributes

 An entity is represented by a set of attributes, that is descriptive

properties possessed by all members of an entity set.
 Example:
instructor = (ID, name, street, city, salary )
course= (course_id, title, credits)
 Domain – the set of permitted values for each attribute
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.11 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Composite Attributes

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.12 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Entity With Composite, Multivalued, and Derived
Attributes

composite

multivalued

derived

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.13 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.14 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 E-R Diagram with a Ternary Relationship

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.15 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.16 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.17 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.18 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 ER Notation for 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:
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.19 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 One-to-One Relationship

 one-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 at most one instructor
via advisor

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.20 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.21 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.22 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.23 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Participation of an Entity Set in a
Relationship Set

 Total participation (indicated by double line): every entity in the

entity set participates in at least one relationship in the relationship
set
 E.g. participation of section in sec_course is total
 every must have an associated course
 Partial participation: some entities may not participate in any
relationship in the relationship set
 Example: participation of instructor in advisor is partial

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.24 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Alternative Notation for Cardinality
Limits
 Cardinality limits can also express participation constraints
 Number on line represents how many times the entity can
participate in the relationship

Quiz Q2: The above relationship is

(1) Many to one from instructor to student
(2) One to many from instructor to student
(3) One to one
(4) many to many

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.25 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.26 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 The picture can't be display ed.

How about doing an ER design

interactively on the board?
Suggest an application to be modeled.

Database System Concepts, 6th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 Weak Entity Sets

 An entity set that does not have a primary key is referred to as a

weak entity set.
 The existence of a weak entity set depends on the existence of a
identifying entity set
 it must relate to the identifying entity set via a total, one-to-
many relationship set from the identifying to the weak entity
set
 Identifying relationship depicted using a double diamond
 The discriminator (or partial key) of a weak entity set is the set
of attributes that distinguishes among all the entities of a weak
entity set.
 The primary key of a weak entity set is formed by the primary key
of the strong entity set on which the weak entity set is existence
dependent, plus the weak entity set’s discriminator.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.28 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Weak Entity Sets (Cont.)

 We underline the discriminator of a weak entity set with a

dashed line.
 We put the identifying relationship of a weak entity in a
double diamond.
 Discriminator of the weak entity set is underlined by dashed
lines
 Primary key for section – (course_id, sec_id, semester, year)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.29 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Weak Entity Sets (Cont.)
 Note: the primary key of the strong entity set is not explicitly
stored with the weak entity set,
 it is implicit in the identifying relationship.
 If course_id were explicitly stored, section could be made a
strong entity
 but then there is an implicit relationship defined by the
attribute course_id common to course and section
 and the implicit relationship duplicates the explicit
relationship between section and course

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.30 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 E-R Diagram for a University Enterprise

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.31 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Reduction to Relational Schemas

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.32 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Representing Entity Sets With Simple
Attributes

 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 )

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.33 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.34 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.35 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Redundancy of Schemas (Cont.)

 For one-to-one relationship sets, either side can be chosen to act

as the “many” side
 That is, 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
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.36 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Composite and Multivalued 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
 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,
Database System Concepts - 6th Edition
date_of_birth)
7.37 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Composite and 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)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.38 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Multivalued Attributes (Cont.)

 Special case:entity time_slot has only one attribute other than the
primary-key attribute, and that attribute is multivalued
 Optimization: Don’t create the relation corresponding to the entity,
just create the one corresponding to the multivalued attribute
 time_slot(time_slot_id, day, start_time, end_time)
 Caveat: time_slot attribute of section (from sec_time_slot) cannot
be a foreign key due to this optimization

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.39 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Extended ER Features
 Specialization/Generalization
 Aggregation (see book for details)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.40 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Extended E-R Features: Specialization

 Top-down design process; we designate subgroupings within an

entity set that are distinctive from other entities in the set.
 These subgroupings 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.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.41 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Specialization Example

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.42 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Design Constraints on a
Specialization/Generalization
 Constraint on which entities can be members of a given lower-
level entity set.
 condition-defined
 Example: all customers over 65 years are members of
senior-citizen entity set; senior-citizen ISA person.
 user-defined
 Constraint on whether or not entities may belong to more than one
lower-level entity set within a single generalization.
 Disjoint
 an entity can belong to only one lower-level entity set
 Noted in E-R diagram by having multiple lower-level entity
sets link to the same triangle
 Overlapping
 an entity can belong to more than one lower-level entity set
Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.43 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Design Constraints on a
Specialization/Generalization (Cont.)
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.44 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.45 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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
 If specialization is total, the schema for the generalized entity set
(person) not required to store information
 Can be defined as a “view” relation containing union of
specialization relations
 But explicit schema may still be needed for foreign key
constraints
 Drawback: name, street and city may be stored redundantly for
people who are both students and employees
Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.46 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 The picture can't be display ed.

How about doing another ER design

interactively on the board?

Database System Concepts, 6th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 Summary of Symbols Used in E-R Notation

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.48 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Symbols Used in E-R Notation (Cont.)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.49 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Alternative ER Notations
 Chen, IDE1FX, …

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.50 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Alternative ER Notations

Chen IDE1FX (Crows feet notation)

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 7.51 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan