UNIT-1

CHAPTER 1.3
(ER Model: Design and issues)

ER Model

What is ER Diagram?

ER Diagram stands for Entity Relationship Diagram, also known as ERD is a diagram that
displays the relationship of entity sets stored in a database. In other words, ER diagrams
help to explain the logical structure of databases. ER diagrams are created based on three
basic concepts: entities, attributes and relationships.

ER Diagrams contain different symbols that use rectangles to represent entities, ovals to
define attributes and diamond shapes to represent relationships.

At first look, an ER diagram looks very similar to the flowchart. However, ER Diagram
includes many specialized symbols, and its meanings make this model unique. The purpose
of ER Diagram is to represent the entity framework infrastructure.

What is ER Model?

ER Model stands for Entity Relationship Model is a high-level conceptual data model
diagram. ER model helps to systematically analyze data requirements to produce a well-
designed database. The ER Model represents real-world entities and the relationships
between them. Creating an ER Model in DBMS is considered as a best practice before
implementing your database.

ER Modeling helps you to analyze data requirements systematically to produce a well-

designed database. So, it is considered a best practice to complete ER modeling before
implementing your database.

History of ER models
ER diagrams are a visual tool which is helpful to represent the ER model. It was proposed by
Peter Chen in 1971 to create a uniform convention which can be used for relational
database and network. He aimed to use an ER model as a conceptual modeling approach.

Why use ER Diagrams?

Here, are prime reasons for using the ER Diagram

● Helps you to define terms related to entity relationship modeling

● Provide a preview of how all your tables should connect, what fields are going to be
on each table
● Helps to describe entities, attributes, relationships
● ER diagrams are translatable into relational tables which allows you to build
databases quickly
● ER diagrams can be used by database designers as a blueprint for implementing
data in specific software applications
● The database designer gains a better understanding of the information to be
contained in the database with the help of ERP diagram
● ERD Diagram allows you to communicate with the logical structure of the database
to users

Facts about ER Diagram Model

Now in this ERD Diagram Tutorial, let's check out some interesting facts about ER
Diagram Model:

● ER model allows you to draw Database Design

● It is an easy to use graphical tool for modeling data
● Widely used in Database Design
● It is a GUI representation of the logical structure of a Database
● It helps you to identifies the entities which exist in a system and the relationships
between those entities

ER Diagrams Symbols & Notations

Entity Relationship Diagram Symbols & Notations mainly contains three basic symbols
which are rectangle, oval and diamond to represent relationships between elements,
entities and attributes. There are some sub-elements which are based on main elements in
ERD Diagram. ER Diagram is a visual representation of data that describes how data is
related to each other using different ERD Symbols and Notations.

Following are the main components and its symbols in ER Diagrams:

 ● Rectangles: This Entity Relationship Diagram symbol represents entity types
● Ellipses : Symbol represent attributes
● Diamonds: This symbol represents relationship types
● Lines: It links attributes to entity types and entity types with other relationship types
● Primary key: attributes are underlined
● Double Ellipses: Represent multi-valued attributes

Components of the ER Diagram

This model is based on three basic concepts:

● Entities
● Attributes
● Relationships

ER Diagram Examples

For example, in a University database, we might have entities for Students, Courses, and
Lecturers. Students entity can have attributes like Rollno, Name, and DeptID. They might
have relationships with Courses and Lecturers.

WHAT IS ENTITY?

A real-world thing either living or non-living that is easily recognizable and nonrecognizable.
It is anything in the enterprise that is to be represented in our database. It may be a physical
thing or simply a fact about the enterprise or an event that happens in the real world.

An entity can be place, person, object, event or a concept, which stores data in the
database. The characteristics of entities are must have an attribute, and a unique key. Every
entity is made up of some 'attributes' which represent that entity.
Examples of entities:

● Person: Employee, Student, Patient

● Place: Store, Building
● Object: Machine, product, and Car
● Event: Sale, Registration, Renewal
● Concept: Account, Course

Notation of an Entity

Entity set:

Student

An entity set is a group of similar kind of entities. It may contain entities with attribute
sharing similar values. Entities are represented by their properties, which also called
attributes. All attributes have their separate values. For example, a student entity may have
a name, age, class, as attributes.

Example of Entities:

A university may have some departments. All these departments employ various lecturers
and offer several programs.

Some courses make up each program. Students register in a particular program and enroll
in various courses. A lecturer from the specific department takes each course, and each
lecturer teaches a various group of students.

Relationship

Relationship is nothing but an association among two or more entities. E.g., Tom works in
the Chemistry department.

Entities take part in relationships. We can often identify relationships with verbs or verb
phrases.
For example:

● You are attending this lecture

● I am giving the lecture
● Just loke entities, we can classify relationships according to relationship-types:
● A student attends a lecture
● A lecturer is giving a lecture.
Weak Entities

A weak entity is a type of entity which doesn't have its key attribute. It can be identified
uniquely by considering the primary key of another entity. For that, weak entity sets need to
have participation.

In above ER Diagram examples, "Trans No" is a discriminator within a group of transactions

in an ATM.

Attributes

It is a single-valued property of either an entity-type or a relationship-type.

For example, a lecture might have attributes: time, date, duration, place, etc.

An attribute in ER Diagram examples, is represented by an Ellipse

Cardinality

Defines the numerical attributes of the relationship between two entities or entity sets.

Different types of cardinal relationships are:

● One-to-One Relationships
● One-to-Many Relationships
● May to One Relationships
● Many-to-Many Relationships
1.One-to-one:

One entity from entity set X can be associated with at most one entity of entity set Y and vice
versa.

Example: One student can register for numerous courses. However, all those courses have a
single line back to that one student.

2.One-to-many:

One entity from entity set X can be associated with multiple entities of entity set Y, but an
entity from entity set Y can be associated with at least one entity.

For example, one class is consisting of multiple students.

3. Many to One

More than one entity from entity set X can be associated with at most one entity of entity
set Y. However, an entity from entity set Y may or may not be associated with more than
one entity from entity set X.

For example, many students belong to the same class.

4. Many to Many:

One entity from X can be associated with more than one entity from Y and vice versa.

For example, Students as a group are associated with multiple faculty members, and faculty
members can be associated with multiple students.

OTHER REFRENCES

• Hierarchical Model with examples and characteristics | T4Tutorials.com

• Hierarchical model in DBMS (beginnersbook.com)

• ER Diagram: Entity Relationship Diagram Model | DBMS Example (guru99.com)

• Entity Relationship(ER) Model (w3schools.in)

SUGGESTED BOOK REFERENCES

1. Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe,“Fundamentals of Database System”, The

Benjamin / Cummings Publishing Co.
2. Korth and Silberschatz Abraham, “Database SystemConcepts”, McGraw Hall.
3. Pratt,”DBMS”, Cengage Learning.