Entity-Relationship Model

Entity-Relationship Model

 Design Process
 Modeling
 Constraints
 E-R Diagram
 Design Issues
 Weak Entity Sets
 Extended E-R Features
 Design of the Bank Database
E-R Diagram for a Banking
Enterprise
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
Entity Sets customer and loan
customer_id customer_ customer_ customer_ loan_ amount
name street city number
Relationship Sets

 A relationship is an association among several entities

Example:
Hayes depositor A-102
customer entity relationship set
account 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:
(Hayes, A-102)  depositor
Relationship Set borrower
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
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.
Example: 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 employee, job, and
branch
 Relationships between more than two entity sets are
rare. Most relationships are binary. (More on this
later.)
Attributes

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

descriptive properties possessed by all members of an
Example:
entity set.
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
 Example: multivalued attribute: phone_numbers

 Derived attributes
 Can be computed from other attributes
 Example: age, given date_of_birth
Composite Attributes
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
Mapping Cardinalities

One to One to many

one
Note: Some elements in A and B may not be mapped to any
elements in the other set
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
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)
E-R Diagram With Composite, Multivalued,
and Derived Attributes
Relationship Sets with Attributes
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
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 customer is associated with at most one loan via the
relationship borrower
 A loan is associated with at most one customer via
borrower
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
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
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
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
 Example: participation of customer in borrower is partial
Alternative Notation for Cardinality
Limits

 Cardinality limits can also express participation

constraints
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.
Relationship Sets with Attributes
 create table customer
(customer_id varchar(15),
customer_name varchar(15),
customer_city char(30),
customer_street varchar(10)
primary key (customer_id))
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.
 Example: 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 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
E-R Diagram with a Ternary
Relationship
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.
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)
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
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
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.
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.
Specialization Example
Extended ER Features:
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.
Specialization and Generalization
(Cont.)

 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
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 writing disjoint next to
the ISA triangle
 Overlapping
 an entity can belong to more than one lower-level
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
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
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
E-R Diagram With Aggregation
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.
E-R Diagram for a Banking
Enterprise
Summary of Symbols Used in E-R Notation
Summary of Symbols (Cont.)