Chapter 2: Entity-Relationship Model

 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

Database System Concepts 2.1 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 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
 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

Database System Concepts 2.2 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 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-name, social-security,
customer-street, customer-city)
account = (account-number, balance)
 Domain – the set of permitted values for each attribute
 Attribute types:
 Simple and composite attributes.
 Single-valued and multi-valued attributes.
 Null attributes.
 Derived attributes.

Database System Concepts 2.3 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 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

Database System Concepts 2.4 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 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

Database System Concepts 2.5 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 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. The
entity sets customer, loan, and branch may be linked by the
ternary (degree three) relationship set CLB.

Database System Concepts 2.6 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 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 ste.
 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

Database System Concepts 2.7 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 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 a 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.

Database System Concepts 2.8 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 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
 We distinguish among these types by drawing either a directed
line (), signifying “one,” or an undirected line (—), signifying
“many,” between the relationship set and the entity set.

Database System Concepts 2.9 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 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

Database System Concepts 2.10 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 One-To-Many and Many-To-One
Relationships

Database System Concepts 2.11 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 One-To-Many and Many-To-One (Cont.)

 In the one-to-many relationship (a), a loan is associated with at

most one customer via borrower, a customer is associated with
several (including 0) loans via borrower
 In the many-to-one relationship (b), a loan is associated with
several (including 0) customers via borrower, a customer is
associated with at most one loan via borrower

Database System Concepts 2.12 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 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

Database System Concepts 2.13 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 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.

Database System Concepts 2.14 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 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
 social-security 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.
 The combination of primary keys of the participating entity
sets forms a candidate key of a relationship set.
 must consider the mapping cardinality and the semantics of the
relationship set when selecting the primary key.
 (social security, account-number) is the primary key of depositor)

Database System Concepts 2.15 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 E-R Diagram Components

 Rectangles represent entity sets.

 Ellipses represent attributes
 Diamonds represent relationship sets.
 Lines link attributes to entity sets and entity sets to relationship
sets.
 Double ellipses represent multivalued attributes.
 Dashed ellipses denote derived attributes.
 Primary key attributes are underlined.

Database System Concepts 2.16 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 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
strong entity set, it must relate to the strong set via a one-to-
many relationship set.
 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.

Database System Concepts 2.17 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 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)

Database System Concepts 2.18 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 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 (i.e.,
saving-account “is an” account).

Database System Concepts 2.19 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Specialization Example

Database System Concepts 2.20 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 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.
 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.

Database System Concepts 2.21 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Design Constraints on a Generalization
 Constrain on which entities can be members of a given lower-level
entity set.
 condition-defined
 user-defined
 Constraint on whether or not entities may belong to more than one
lower-level entity set within a single generalization.
 disjoint
 overlapping
 Completeness constraint – specifies whether or not an entity in the
higher-level entity set must belong to at least on eof the lower-level
entity sets within a generalization.
 total
 partial

Database System Concepts 2.22 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Aggregation
 Loan customers may be advised by a loan-officer.

Database System Concepts 2.23 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Aggregation (Cont.)

 Relationship sets borrower and loan-officer represent the same

information
 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 that:
 A customer takes out a loan
 An employee may be a loan officer for a customer-loan pair

Database System Concepts 2.24 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Aggregation Example

Database System Concepts 2.25 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 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 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.

Database System Concepts 2.26 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 E-R Diagram for Banking Enterprise

Database System Concepts 2.27 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Reduction of an E-R Schema to Tables

 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.

Database System Concepts 2.28 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Representing Entity Sets as Tables
 A strong entity set reduces to a table with the same attributes.

customer-name social-security c-street c-city

Jones 321-12-3123 Main Harrison
Smith 019-28-3746 North Rye
Hayes 677-89-9011 Main Harrison

A weak entity set becomes a table that includes a column for the
primary key of the identifying strong entity set.

loan-number payment-number payment-date payment-amount

L-17 5 10 May 1996 50
L-23 11 17 May 1996 75
L-15 22 12 May 1996 300

Database System Concepts 2.29 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 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.

social-security account-number access-date

... ... ...

The depositor table

The table corresponding to a relationship set linking a weak entity

set to its identifying strong entity set is redundant.
The payment table already contains the information that would
appear in the loan-payment table (i.e., the columns loan-
number and payment-number).

Database System Concepts 2.30 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Representing Generalization as Tables
 Method 1: Form a table for the generalized entity account Form a table
for each entity set that is generalized (include primary key of
generalized entity set)

table table attributes

accountaccount-number, balance, account-type
savings-account account-number, interest-rate
checking-account account-number, overdraft-amount
 Method 2: Form a table for each entity set that is generalized

table table attributes

savings-account account-number, balance, interest-rate
checking-account account-number, balance, overdraft-amount
Method 2 has no table for generalized entity account

Database System Concepts 2.31 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Relations Corresponding to
Aggregation
customer
customer-name cust-social-security customer-street customer-city

loan
loan-number amount

borrower
cust-social-security loan-number

employee
emp-social-security employee-name phone-number

loan-officer
emp-social-security cust-social-security loan-number

Database System Concepts 2.32 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Entity Sets Customer and Loan

Database System Concepts 2.33 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Composite Attributes customer-name and customer-address

Database System Concepts 2.34 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Relationship set borrower

Database System Concepts 2.35 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Mapping Cardinalities

One to one One to many

Database System Concepts 2.36 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Mapping Cardinalities

Many to one Many to many

Database System Concepts 2.37 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Access-date as Attribute of the account entity

Database System Concepts 2.38 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Access-date as Attribute of the depositor Relationship Set

Database System Concepts 2.39 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 E-R Diagram with an Attribute Attached to a Relationship

Database System Concepts 2.40 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 E-R Diagram with Role Indicators

Database System Concepts 2.41 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 E-R Diagram for Exercise 2.13

Database System Concepts 2.42 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 E-R Diagram for Exercise 2.18

Database System Concepts 2.43 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan