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

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 Entity relationship model

 Comprises of entity and relationship

 What is entity?

Entity: Object/thing in the world

that is distinguishable from all
other object.
Example: specific person, company,
event, plant

o f e n t i t i e s of
n ti t y s et: Set r e s ome
E s ha
m e t yp es that What is entity set?
sa es
properti o n s,
: s e t o f all pers
e s
Exampl s, trees, holiday
ie
compan
 Entity Sets customer and loan
customer-id customer- customer- customer- loan- amount
name street city 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

Derive
Compo attribute d
Simple site Multi-
attribut
attribut attribut Single- valued
e
e e valued attribut
E.g.
Eg- Eg- attribut e.
age,
class- name(fi e (phone-
given
roll rst,mid, no)
date of
last)
birth
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 Composite Attributes

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 Relationship
 A relationship is an association among several entities

Example:
Hayes borrower L-15
customer entity relationship loan entity

 A relationship 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, L-15)  borrower

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 Relationship Set borrower
 A relationship set is a set of relationships of the same type.

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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 multi-valued attributes.
 Dashed ellipses denote derived attributes.
 Underline indicates primary key attributes (will study later)
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 E-R Diagram With Composite, Multi-
valued, and Derived Attributes

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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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 Relationship Sets with Attributes

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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).

 Relationship sets may involve more than two entity sets.

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 E-R Diagram with a Ternary
Relationship
Employees of a bank may have jobs at multiple branches, with
different jobs at different branches. Then there is a ternary
relationship set .

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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 to many

one
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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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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 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.
 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-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-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-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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 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 (recursive relationship).
 Roles are indicated in E-R diagrams by labeling the lines that
connect diamonds to rectangles.

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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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 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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 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 one-to-many
relationship set from the identifying to the weak entity set
 Identifying relationship depicted using a double diamond

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 Weak Entity Sets
 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.

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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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 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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 Extended ERD

 Includes all modeling concepts of basic ER

 Additional concepts: subclasses/super-classes,

specialization/generalization, categories, attribute inheritance

 The resulting model is called the enhanced-ER or Extended ER

(E2R or EER) model

 It is used to model applications more completely and accurately

if needed

 It includes some object-oriented concepts, such as inheritance

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 Super-class & Subclass

 An entity type may have additional meaningful sub groupings of

its entities

 Example: EMPLOYEE may be further grouped into

SECRETARY, ENGINEER, MANAGER, TECHNICIAN,
SALARIED_EMPLOYEE, HOURLY_EMPLOYEE,…
 Each of these groupings is a subset of EMPLOYEE entities
 Each is called a subclass of EMPLOYEE
 EMPLOYEE is the super-class for each of these subclasses

 These are called super-class/subclass relationships.

 E.g. EMPLOYEE/SECRETARY,EMPLOYEE/TECHNICIAN

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 Super-class & Subclass
 An entity that is member of a subclass represents the same real-
world entity as some member of the super-class
 The Subclass member is the same entity in a distinct specific
role
 An entity cannot exist in the database merely by being a
member of a subclass; it must also be a member of the super-
class
 A member of the super-class can be optionally included as a
member of any number of its subclasses

 An entity that is member of a subclass inherits all attributes of the

entity as a member of the super-class and all relationships also.

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 Specialization

 The process of defining a set of subclasses of a super-class.

 Top-down design process; we designate sub groupings within an
entity set that are distinctive from other entities in the set.

 These sub groupings 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.

 Several classes with common features are generalized into a

super-class; original classes become its subclasses

 Example: CAR, TRUCK generalized into VEHICLE; both CAR,

TRUCK become subclasses of the super-class VEHICLE

 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 super-class - 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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 Constraints on
Specialization and
Generalization
 Hence, we have four types of specialization/generalization:
 Disjoint, total
 Disjoint, partial
 Overlapping, total
 Overlapping, partial
 Note: Generalization usually is total because the super-class is derived
from the subclasses.
Example of disjoint partial
Specialization
 Specialization /
Generalization Lattice
Example (UNIVERSITY)
 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.
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 Summary of Symbols Used in E-R
Notation

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 Summary of Symbols (Cont.)

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 Alternative E-R Notations

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 E-R Diagram for a Banking
Enterprise

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