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
 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 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
 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 One to many

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
 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.
 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 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

E-R Diagram with a Ternary Relationship
 Cardinality Constraints on Ternary
Relationship
 We allow at most one arrow out of a ternary (or greater degree) relationship
to indicate a cardinality constraint
 E.g. an arrow from works_on to job indicates each employee works on at
most one job at any branch.
 If there is more than one arrow, there are two ways of defining the meaning.
 E.g a ternary relationship R between A, B and C with arrows to B and C
could mean
1. each A entity is associated with a unique entity from B and C or
2. each pair of entities from (A, B) is associated with a unique C entity,
and each pair (A, C) is associated with a unique B
 Each alternative has been used in different formalisms
 To avoid confusion we outlaw more than one arrow
 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 any 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.
 Placement of relationship attributes
 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
 Example: works_on
 Converting Non-Binary Relationships to
Binary Form
 In general, any non-binary relationship can be represented using binary relationships
by creating an artificial entity set.
 Replace R between entity sets A, B and C by an entity set E, and three
relationship sets:
1. RA, relating E and A 2.RB, relating E and B
3. RC, relating E and C
 Create a special identifying attribute for E
 Add any attributes of R to E
 For each relationship (ai , bi , ci) in R, create
1. a new entity ei in the entity set E 2. add (ei , ai ) to RA
3. add (ei , bi ) to RB 4. add (ei , ci ) to RC
 Converting Non-Binary Relationships
(Cont.)
 Also need to translate constraints
 Translating all constraints may not be possible
 There may be instances in the translated schema that
cannot correspond to any instance of R
 Exercise: add constraints to the relationships RA, RB and
RC to ensure that a newly created entity corresponds to
exactly one entity in each of entity sets A, B and C
 We can avoid creating an identifying attribute by making E a
weak entity set (described shortly) identified by the three
relationship sets
 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
 That is, the relationship from account to customer is many to one, or
equivalently, customer to account is one to many
 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 entity set
 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.)