Entity-Relationship Model

 Entity, Relationship, and E-R Diagram

 Entity
 Attributes
 Weak/Regular Entity
 Relationship
 Degree
 Mapping Cardinality
 Relationship with Attributes
 Participation
 Keys
 Extended E-R Features
 Entity Specialization/Generalization
 Relationship Aggregation
 Design of an E-R Database Schema

2.1
 Entity, Relationship, and E-R Diagram

 A database can be modeled as:

a collection of entities,
relationship among entities.
 A database can be illustrated by an E-R diagram

2.2
 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. (will study later)
 Dashed ellipses denote derived attributes. (will study later)
 Underline indicates primary key attributes (will study later)
2.3
 Entity Sets

 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

2.4
 Entity Sets customer and loan
customer-id customer- customer- customer- loan- amount
name street city number

2.5
 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

2.6
Composite Attributes

2.7
E-R Diagram With Composite, Multivalued, and
Derived Attributes

2.8
 Weak Entity and Regular/Strong Entity

 A weak entity is an entity that is existence-dependent

on some other entity. By contrast, a regular entity (or
“a strong entity”) is an entity which is not weak.
 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
 E.g. An employee’s dependents might be weak
entities --- they can’t exist (so far as the database is
concerned) if the relevant employee does not exist.
 A weak entity type can be related to more than one
regular entity type.

2.9
Weak Entity and Regular/Strong Entity
 We depict a weak entity by double rectangles.
 The identifying relationship is depicted using a
double diamond.

2.10
E-R Diagram with a Ternary Relationship

2.11
 Binary Vs. Non-Binary Relationships
 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

2.12
 Roles
 Entity sets of a relationship need not be distinct
o The labels “manager” and “worker” are called roles; they specify
how employee entities interact via the works-for relationship set.
o Roles are indicated in E-R diagrams by labeling the lines that
connect diamonds to rectangles.
o Role labels are optional, and are used to clarify semantics of the
relationship

2.13
 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

2.14
 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

2.15
 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

2.16
 Mapping Cardinality
 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.
 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

2.17
 One-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

2.18
 Many-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

2.19
 Many-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

2.20
 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

2.21
Relationship Sets with Attributes

2.22
 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

2.23
 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.

2.24
 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

2.25
Recursive Relationship Type is: SUPERVISION
(participation role names are shown)

2.26
Attribute of a Relationship Type is:
Hours of WORKS_ON

2.27
COMPANY ER Schema Diagram
using (min, max) notation

2.28
 ER DIAGRAM FOR A BANK
DATABASE

© The Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company, Inc. 1994, Elmasri/Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Second Edition

2.29
 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.

2.30
Specialization Example

2.31
 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.

2.32
 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

2.33
 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

2.34
 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

2.35
 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

2.36
 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 can’t 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

2.37
E-R Diagram With Aggregation

2.38
 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 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.

2.39
E-R Diagram for a Banking Enterprise

2.40
Summary of Symbols Used in E-R
Notation

2.41
Summary of Symbols (Cont.)

2.42
Alternative E-R Notations

2.43