Chapter 2: Entity-Relationship Model Entity Entity Sets  Relationship Sets  Design Issues  Mapping Constraints  Keys  E-R Diagram

 Extended E-R Features  Design of an E-R Database Schema  Reduction of an E-R Schema to Tables

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Entity Sets
 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

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Entity Sets customer and loan

customer-id customer- customer- customername street city loan- amount number

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

possessed by all members of an entity set. Example: customer = (customer-id, customer-name, customer-street, customer-city) loan = (loan-number, amount)
 Domain the set of permitted values for each attribute  Attribute types: Simple and composite attributes. Single-valued and multi-valued attributes E.g. multivalued attribute: phone-numbers Derived attributes Can be computed from other attributes E.g. age, given date of birth

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Composite Attributes

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Relationship Sets
 A relationship is an association among several entities

Example: Hayes customer entity from entity sets {(e1, e2, en) | e1 E1, e2 E2, , en En} where (e1, e2, , en) is a relationship
Example: (Hayes, A-102) depositor

depositor relationship set

A-102 account entity

 A relationship set is a mathematical relation among n u 2 entities, each taken

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Relationship Set borrower

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Relationship Sets (Cont.)

 An attribute can also be property of a relationship set.  For instance, the depositor relationship set between entity sets customer and

account may have the attribute access-date

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Degree of a Relationship Set

 Refers to number of entity sets that participate in a relationship set.  Relationship sets that involve two entity sets are binary (or degree two).

Generally, most relationship sets in a database system are binary.

 Relationship sets may involve more than two entity sets.

E.g. Suppose employees of a bank may have jobs (responsibilities) at multiple branches, with different jobs at different branches. Then there is a ternary relationship set between entity sets are rare. Most  Relationships between more than twoentity sets employee, job andrelationships are branch

binary. (More on this later.)

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Mapping Cardinalities
 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

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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 2.11 Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

Mapping Cardinalities

Many to one

Many to many

Note: Some elements in A and B may not be mapped to any elements in the other set
Database System Concepts 2.12 Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

Mapping Cardinalities affect ER Design

 Can make access-date an attribute of account, instead of a relationship attribute,

if each account can have only one customer

 I.e., the relationship from account to customer is many to one, or

equivalently, customer to account is one to many

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E-R Diagrams

 Rectangles represent entity sets.  Diamonds represent relationship sets.  Lines link attributes to entity sets and entity sets to relationship sets.  Ellipses represent attributes  Double ellipses represent multivalued attributes.  Dashed ellipses denote derived attributes.  Underline indicates primary key attributes (will study later)
Database System Concepts 2.14 Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

E-R Diagram With Composite, Multivalued, and Derived Attributes

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Relationship Sets with Attributes

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Roles
 Entity sets of a relationship need not be distinct
 The labels manager and worker are called roles; they specify how employee

entities interact via the works-for relationship set.

 Roles are indicated in E-R diagrams by labeling the lines that connect diamonds to

rectangles.
 Role labels are optional, and are used to clarify semantics of the relationship

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Cardinality Constraints
 We express cardinality constraints by drawing either a directed line (p),

signifying one, or an undirected line (), signifying many, between the relationship set and the entity set.
 E.g.: One-to-one relationship: A customer is associated with at most one loan via the relationship borrower A loan is associated with at most one customer via borrower

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One-ToOne-To-Many Relationship
 In the one-to-many relationship a loan is associated with at most one customer

via borrower, a customer is associated with several (including 0) loans via borrower

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Many-ToMany-To-One Relationships
 In a many-to-one relationship a loan is associated with several (including 0)

customers via borrower, a customer is associated with at most one loan via borrower

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Many-ToMany-To-Many Relationship

 A customer is associated with several (possibly 0) loans via borrower  A loan is associated with several (possibly 0) customers via borrower

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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 loan in borrower is total  every loan must have a customer associated to it via borrower  Partial participation: some entities may not participate in any relationship in the

relationship set
 E.g. participation of customer in borrower is partial

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Alternative Notation for Cardinality Limits

 Cardinality limits can also express participation constraints

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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 Customer-id is candidate key of customer account-number is candidate key of account  Although several candidate keys may exist, one of the candidate keys is

selected to be the primary key.

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Keys for Relationship Sets

 The combination of primary keys of the participating entity sets forms a super

key of a relationship set.

(customer-id, account-number) is the super key of depositor NOTE: this means a pair of entity sets can have at most one relationship in a particular relationship set. E.g. if we wish to track all access-dates to each account by each customer, we cannot assume a relationship for each access. We can use a multivalued attribute though  Must consider the mapping cardinality of the relationship set when deciding the

what are the candidate keys

 Need to consider semantics of relationship set in selecting the primary key in

case of more than one candidate key

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E-R Diagram with a Ternary Relationship

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Cardinality Constraints on Ternary Relationship

 We allow at most one arrow out of a ternary (or greater degree) relationship to

indicate a cardinality constraint

 E.g. an arrow from works-on to job indicates each employee works on at most one

job at any branch.

 If there is more than one arrow, there are two ways of defining the meaning. E.g 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, 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 and

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Binary Vs. Non-Binary Relationships Non Some relationships that appear to be non-binary may be better represented using

binary relationships
E.g. 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 know) But there are some relationships that are naturally non-binary E.g. works-on

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Converting Non-Binary Relationships to Binary Form Non 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 3. RC, relating E and C

Create a special identifying attribute for E Add any attributes of R to E For each relationship (ai , bi , ci) in R, create

2.RB, relating E and B

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

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Converting Non-Binary Relationships (Cont.) Non Also need to translate constraints Translating all constraints may not be possible There may be instances in the translated schema that cannot correspond to any instance of R Exercise: add constraints to the relationships RA, RB and RC to ensure that a newly created entity corresponds to exactly one entity in each of entity sets A, B and C We can avoid creating an identifying attribute by making E a weak entity set (described shortly) identified by the three relationship sets

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Design Issues
 Use of entity sets vs. attributes

Choice mainly depends on the structure of the enterprise being modeled, and on the semantics associated with the attribute in question.  Use of entity sets vs. relationship sets Possible guideline is to designate a relationship set to describe an action that occurs between entities  Binary versus n-ary relationship sets Although it is possible to replace any nonbinary (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.  Placement of relationship attributes

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How about doing an ER design interactively on the board? Suggest an application to be modeled.

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 sets discriminator.

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Weak Entity Sets (Cont.)

 We depict a weak entity set by double rectangles.  We underline the discriminator of a weak entity set with a dashed line.  payment-number discriminator of the payment entity set  Primary key for payment (loan-number, payment-number)

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Weak Entity Sets (Cont.)

 Note: the primary key of the strong entity set is not explicitly stored with the

weak entity set, since it is implicit in the identifying relationship.

 If loan-number were explicitly stored, payment could be made a strong entity,

but then the relationship between payment and loan would be duplicated by an implicit relationship defined by the attribute loan-number common to payment and loan

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More Weak Entity Set Examples

 In a university, a course is a strong entity and a course-offering can be modeled

as a weak entity
 The discriminator of course-offering would be semester (including year) and

section-number (if there is more than one section)

 If we model course-offering as a strong entity we would model course-number as

an attribute. Then the relationship with course would be implicit in the course-number attribute

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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. customer 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.

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Specialization Example

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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.

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Specialization and Generalization (Contd.)

 Can have multiple specializations of an entity set based on different features.  E.g. permanent-employee vs. temporary-employee, in addition to officer vs.

secretary vs. teller

 Each particular employee would be a member of one of permanent-employee or temporary-employee, and also a member of one of officer, secretary, or teller  The ISA relationship also referred to as superclass - subclass relationship

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Design Constraints on a Specialization/Generalization

 Constraint on which entities can be members of a given lower-level entity

set.
condition-defined E.g. 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 writing disjoint next to the ISA triangle Overlapping an entity can belong to more than one lower-level entity set

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Design Constraints on a Specialization/Generalization (Contd.)

 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

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Aggregation
 Consider the ternary relationship works-on, which we saw earlier  Suppose we want to record managers for tasks performed by an

employee at a branch

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Aggregation (Cont.)
 Relationship sets works-on and manages represent overlapping information Every manages relationship corresponds to a works-on relationship However, some works-on relationships may not correspond to any manages relationships So we cant discard the works-on relationship  Eliminate this redundancy via aggregation Treat relationship as an abstract entity Allows relationships between relationships Abstraction of relationship into new entity  Without introducing redundancy, the following diagram represents: An employee works on a particular job at a particular branch An employee, branch, job combination may have an associated manager

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E-R Diagram With Aggregation

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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.

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E-R Diagram for a Banking Enterprise

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How about doing another ER design interactively on the board?

Summary of Symbols Used in E-R Notation E-

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Summary of Symbols (Cont.)

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Alternative E-R Notations E-

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UML
 UML: Unified Modeling Language  UML has many components to graphically model different aspects of an entire

software system
 UML Class Diagrams correspond to E-R Diagram, but several differences.

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Summary of UML Class Diagram Notation

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UML Class Diagrams (Contd.)

 Entity sets are shown as boxes, and attributes are shown within the box, rather

than as separate ellipses in E-R diagrams.

 Binary relationship sets are represented in UML by just drawing a line connecting

the entity sets. The relationship set name is written adjacent to the line.
 The role played by an entity set in a relationship set may also be specified by

writing the role name on the line, adjacent to the entity set.
 The relationship set name may alternatively be written in a box, along with

attributes of the relationship set, and the box is connected, using a dotted line, to the line depicting the relationship set.
 Non-binary relationships drawn using diamonds, just as in ER diagrams

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UML Class Diagram Notation (Cont.)

overlapping

disjoint

*Note reversal of position in cardinality constraint depiction *Generalization can use merged or separate arrows independent of disjoint/overlapping
Database System Concepts 2.55 Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

UML Class Diagrams (Contd.)

 Cardinality constraints are specified in the form l..h, where l denotes the minimum

and h the maximum number of relationships an entity can participate in.

 Beware: the positioning of the constraints is exactly the reverse of the positioning of

constraints in E-R diagrams.

 The constraint 0..* on the E2 side and 0..1 on the E1 side means that each E2 entity

can participate in at most one relationship, whereas each E1 entity can participate in many relationships; in other words, the relationship is many to one from E2 to E1.
 Single values, such as 1 or * may be written on edges; The single value 1 on an

edge is treated as equivalent to 1..1, while * is equivalent to 0..*.

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Reduction of an E-R Schema to Tables E Primary keys allow entity sets and relationship sets to be expressed

uniformly as tables which represent the contents of the database.

 A database which conforms to an E-R diagram can be represented by

a collection of tables.
 For each entity set and relationship set there is a unique table which is

assigned the name of the corresponding entity set or relationship set.

 Each table has a number of columns (generally corresponding to

attributes), which have unique names.

 Converting an E-R diagram to a table format is the basis for deriving a

relational database design from an E-R diagram.

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Representing Entity Sets as Tables

 A strong entity set reduces to a table with the same attributes.

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Composite and Multivalued Attributes

 Composite attributes are flattened out by creating a separate attribute for each

component attribute
E.g. given entity set customer with composite attribute name with component attributes first-name and last-name the table corresponding to the entity set has two attributes name.first-name and name.last-name  A multivalued attribute M of an entity E is represented by a separate table EM Table EM has attributes corresponding to the primary key of E and an attribute corresponding to multivalued attribute M E.g. Multivalued attribute dependent-names of employee is represented by a table employee-dependent-names( employee-id, dname) Each value of the multivalued attribute maps to a separate row of the table EM E.g., an employee entity with primary key John and dependents Johnson and Johndotir maps to two rows: (John, Johnson) and (John, Johndotir)

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Representing Weak Entity Sets

 A weak entity set becomes a table that includes a column for the primary

key of the identifying strong entity set

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Representing Relationship Sets as Tables

 A many-to-many relationship set is represented as a table with columns for

the primary keys of the two participating entity sets, and any descriptive attributes of the relationship set.
 E.g.: table for relationship set borrower

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Redundancy of Tables
 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  E.g.: Instead of creating a table for relationship account-branch, add an attribute branch to the entity set account

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Redundancy of Tables (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 table by an extra attribute

in the relation corresponding to the many side could result in null values  The table corresponding to a relationship set linking a weak entity set to its identifying strong entity set is redundant.
E.g. The payment table already contains the information that would appear in the loan-payment table (i.e., the columns loan-number and payment-number).

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Representing Specialization as Tables

 Method 1:
Form a table for the higher level entity Form a table for each lower level entity set, include primary key of higher level entity set and local attributes table person customer employee table attributes name, street, city name, credit-rating name, salary

Drawback: getting information about, e.g., employee requires accessing two tables

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Representing Specialization as Tables (Cont.)

 Method 2:
Form a table for each entity set with all local and inherited attributes table table attributes person name, street, city customer name, street, city, credit-rating employee name, street, city, salary If specialization is total, table for generalized entity (person) not required to store information Can be defined as a view relation containing union of specialization tables But explicit table may still be needed for foreign key constraints Drawback: street and city may be stored redundantly for persons who are both customers and employees

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Relations Corresponding to Aggregation

 To represent aggregation, create a table containing  primary key of the aggregated relationship,  the primary key of the associated entity set  Any descriptive attributes

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Relations Corresponding to Aggregation (Cont.)

 E.g. to represent aggregation manages between relationship works-on and

entity set manager, create a table manages(employee-id, branch-name, title, manager-name)

 Table works-on is redundant provided we are willing to store null values for

attribute manager-name in table manages

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End of Chapter 2

E-R Diagram for Exercise 2.10

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E-R Diagram for Exercise 2.15

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E-R Diagram for Exercise 2.22

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E-R Diagram for Exercise 2.15

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Existence Dependencies
 If the existence of entity x depends on the existence of entity y, then x

is said to be existence dependent on y.

y is a dominant entity (in example below, loan) x is a subordinate entity (in example below, payment)

loan

loan-payment

payment

If a loan entity is deleted, then all its associated payment entities must be deleted also.

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