ER MODEL

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 CONTENT
■ ER MODEL DEFINITION
■ ENTITY
■ ATTRIBUTES
■ RELATIONSHIP
■ SYMBOLS
■ CARDINALITIES

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 Database Design
 Requirements gathering and specifications
– provide you with a high-level understanding of
– the organization,
– its data, and
– the processes
that you must model in the database.

 Database design
− involves constructing a suitable model of this information.

 Types of DB Design
1. Conceptual Design/Logical Design- ER model
2. Physical design- Relational model

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Conceptual Database Design
 Modeling the collected information at a high-level
 without using a particular DBMS.

 The most popular database design language is the

Entity-relationship model proposed by Peter Chen in 1976.

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Relation Instances

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 Relation Instances
Relation Instances

ER Model
ER Model Example

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 ERD Design Steps
1. Find the Entities from the problem statement
(Look for Nouns)

2. Find Attributes of each Entity

(adjectives -
describing features of entity)

3. Find the Relationships between the entities.

(Check for Verbs)

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 Entity Sets
■ An entity in an ER model is a thing in the real world, can be
– Physical (e.g. person, animal, place)
– Conceptual (e.g. event, company, job, university course)
stored as a record or a table row
Example: specific person, company, event, plant

 An entity set is a set of entities of the same type that share the same
properties.
stored as a relation or a table
Example: set of all persons, companies, trees, holidays

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 Entity
Entity
 Represents a group of real-world objects that have properties.
 Does not always have to be a physical real-world object such as a
person or department,
 it can be an abstract concept such as a project or job.
 Stored as a relation or a table
 Example: Person (Employee, Student), Department(Sales, Accounts
D), Place(Hospital, University), object or event, Project

Entity instance
 is a particular example or occurrence of an entity type.
 Ex: entity : Employee(Eid, Ename, Esal),
 entity instance (1, ‘Hulk’, 5000).

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1. Representing Entity
 Entity are represented by rectangles with the name of the entity
in the rectangle.

 Examples:

 An entity name is normally a singular NOUN.

Person instead of People, Project instead of Projects

 First letter of each word in the entity name is capital

Find the Entities from the problem statement (Look for Nouns)
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2. Relationship

Relationship
• is a set of meaningful associations/ connections among entities
• Each relationship is given a name that describes its function.
• Example:
• Employee works on Project, Teacher teaches Subject,
• Customer owns Account, Customer buys Cake, Doctor treats Patient

Relationship instance
is a particular occurrence of a relationship that relates entity instances.
Ex, WorksOn - relationship
Relationship instance : ‘Tony Stark' works on project ' End Game ‘
or (Tony Stark, End Game).
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Representing Relationship Types

A simple relationship between two entities is represented as a

named diamond that connects the two entity types.

Name

Find the Relationships between the entities.

(Check for Verbs –
Make sentence using 2 Entities)

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 Attributes
Property of an entity or a relationship.
Ex, entity Employee has attributes: name, salary, title, etc.
Represented as named ellipse

Rules:
1. attribute names begin with a lower case letter.

2. Each attribute has a domain which is

the set of allowable values for the attribute.
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 Attributes Types
2. Find Attributes of each Entity
(adjectives - describing features of entity)

 Attributes may be

 Simple/ Single valued attribute (ellipse)

 Composite attribute (hierarchy of ellipses)

 Multi-valued attribute (double ellipse)

 Derived attribute (dashed ellipse)

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02/23/202
 Attributes Types (contd…)
A. Simple attribute
 contains a single part.
 Also called atomic attributes.
– Example, salary.
Represented by an ellipse

B. Composite attribute
 consists of multiple components (subattributes) each.
– Ex: address consists of (street, city and state)
– Name consists of (?,?,?)
 Represented as
 hierarchy of ellipses
– splitting of the ellipse
into component ellipses
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 Attributes Types (contd…)
Composite Attributes

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 Single-Valued and Multi-Valued
Attributes
A. Single-valued attribute
consists of a single value for each entity instance.
Example: salary

B. Multi-valued attribute
 Attribute may have multiple values for a single entity instance.
 Ex:
a) Telephone number =(home phone number, cell phone number, etc.)

b) Degree=(ATHE, BSc Computing, MSc-IT)

 Represented as a double ellipse
Name

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Derived Attributes
Derived attribute
 Its value is calculated from other attributes
 Its value is not physically stored.
Name
 Represented by dashed ellipse

Example :
a) Age can be calculated from DOB

b) Percentage obtained can be calculated from all Subject Marks

c) Total_Price_products_purchased can be found using
UnitPrice and QuantityOrdered

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 Keys
 A candidate key is a minimal set of attributes that uniquely
identifies each instance of an entity type.
 For example, the number attribute uniquely identifies an
Employee and is a candidate key for the Employee entity type.
 A primary key is a candidate key that is selected to identify each
instance of an entity type.
 The primary key is chosen from a set of candidate keys. For
instance, an employee may also have EmiratesID as an
attribute. The primary key may be either EmiratesID or number
as both are candidate keys.
 A composite key is a key that consists of two or more attributes.
 For example, a course is uniquely identified only by the course
code (22C) and the course number within the department (144).
identify the type of attributes
Example

22 Yan Huang - ER

02/23/202
Attributes in the ER Model Example

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Class Activity
■ Draw an E-R Diagram for the following
statement. “Players has team and they
participated games.” / “Customer buys
novel creates by writer.”

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■ ER
SYMBOL
S

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 ERD Design Steps
1. Find the Entities from the problem statement
(Look for Nouns)

2. Find Attributes of each Entity

(adjectives -
describing features of entity)

3. Find the Relationships between the entities.

(Check for Verbs)

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Step 4: Relationship Cardinalities
■ Relationship cardinalities or multiplicities
■ multiplicity –
number of possible occurrences of an entity that
may relate to a single occurrence of an associated
entity.

(Q1: 1 instance of First entity is related to

how many Instances of second entity
Ans: One Employee WorksFor ONE Department (Put 1 besides Department)
Q2: 1 instance of Second Entity is related to
how many instances of First Entity)
Ans: One Department has many Employees (Put N besides Employee)
■ There are 4 common types:
– ONE-TO-ONE (1:1)
– ONE-TO-MANY (1:* OR 1:N)
– MANY-TO-ONE (*:1 OR M:1)
– MANY-TO-MANY (*:* OR N:M) 27
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
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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
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 a. One-to-One Relationships
 In a one-to-one relationship,
 each instance of an entity class E1
can be associated with
 at most one instance of another entity class E2
 and vice versa.
 Example: A department may have only one manager, and
a manager may manage only one department.

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 a. One-to-One Relationship
Example

A department may have only one manager.

A manager (employee) may manage only one department.

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 b. One-to-Many Relationships
■ each instance of an entity E1 can be associated with
■ more than one instance of another entity E2.

■ However, E2 can only be associated with

– at most one instance of entity E1.

■ Example: A department offers many courses, but

a course is offered by only one department.

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 b. One-to-Many Relationship
Example

A project may be associated with at most one department.

A department may have multiple projects.

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 c. Many-to-Many Relationships

■ each instance of an entity E1 can be associated with

■ more than one instance of another entity E2
■ and vice versa.

■ Example: An employee may work on multiple projects, and

a project may have multiple employees working on it.

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c. Many-to-Many Relationship
Example

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37
■ ER
SYMBOL
S

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 ERD Design Steps
1. Find the Entities from the problem statement
(Look for Nouns)

2. Find Attributes of each Entity

(adjectives - describing features of entity)

3. Find the Relationships between the entities.

(Check for Verbs –
Make sentence using 2 Entities)

4. Find the cardinalities of the Relationships between the entities.

(Q1: 1 instance of First entity is related to
how many Instances of second entity
Ans: One Employee WorksFor ONE Department (Put 1 besides Department)
Q2: 1 instance of Second Entity is related to
how many instances of First Entity)
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Ans: One Department has many Employees (Put N besides Employee)
An Example

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Yan Huang - ER
02/23/202
Class Activity
■ Draw an E-R Diagram for the following
statement. “Players has team and they
participated games.” / “Customer buys
novel creates by writer.”

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 ER Design TASK
■ Construct an ER Model for a university database where:
– Each student has an id, name, birth date, and Grade /mark.

– Each professor has a name and is in a department.

– Each department offers courses and has professors. A department has
a name and a building location.
– Each course has a name and number and may have multiple sections.
– Each section is taught by a professor and has a section number.
– Students enroll in sections of courses. They may only enroll in a course
once (and in a single section). Once a student completes a course, they
receive a grade.

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Task 2.a

■ Construct an ER Model for an Electronics

shop database which stores sales and customer
information
■ The database may includes the following
table.
■ Sales, Customer, Product, Supplier, Order,
Promotion, Staff , Department etc.

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 REFERENCES:
 Connolly, T.M. and Begg, C.E. (2015) Database systems: a practical
approach to design, implementation, and management. Pearson
Education.

 Coronel, C. and Morris, S. (2016) Database systems: design,

implementation, & management. London. Cengage Learning

 Elmasri, R. and Navathe., S.B., (2016). Fundamentals of Database

Systems, 7th Edition. New Jersey: Pearson.

 Teorey, T. (2011) Database Modelling and design: logical design.

Burlington: Elsevier