Tutorial on Entity-Relationship Diagrams —

CPSC 304

February 2, 2007

Abstract
This tutorial consists of 4 questions of ER diagrams. Q1 is a small
one so that students feel it easy to follow the specs. listed one by one. Q2
is a question used in previous course about a ”Motor Vehicle Branch”’s
management system. It’s a small ER containing only 5 entities and 3
relationships. Students are able to do the ER diagram once in a whole.
Q3 is a bigger design task, for this one, students need step by step create
their ER diagrams so that they won’t miss any constraints in spec. Q4
is a totally ”Free” design of a ”Movies4all” webservice in which basic
elements are given and students need to come to their own idea of how
these elements (entities) are organized together. They need to come to
their own assumptions and comments for the ER diagram.

Question 1
Draw an ER diagram for the following application from the manufacturing in-
dustry:
1. Each supplier has a unique name.
2. More than one supplier can be located in the same city.

3. Each part has a unique part number.

4. Each part has a colour.
5. A supplier can supply more than one part.
6. A part can be supplied by more than one supplier.
7. A supplier can supply a fixed quantity of each part.

Answer to Question 1
E-R diagram for Supplier-Part scenario.

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 Figure 1: ER-diagram for supplier-part

Question 2
The Motor Vehicle Branch administers driving tests and issues driver’s licenses.
Any person who wants a driver’s license must first take a learner’s exam at any
Motor Vehicle Branch in the province. If he/she fails the exam, he can take the
exam again any time after a week of the failed exam date, at any branch. If he
passes the exam, he is issued a license (type = learner’s) with a unique license
number. A learner’s license may contain a single restriction on it. The person
may take his driver’s exam at any branch any time before the learner’s license
expiry date (which is usually set at six months after the license issue date). If
he passes the exam, the branch issues him a driver’s license. A driver’s license
must also record if the driver has completed driver’s education, for insurance
purposes.
Create a E-R diagram following these steps.
1. Find out the entities in the spec.
2. Find out the relationships among the entities.
3. figure out attributes of the entities and (if any) of the relationships.
4. figure out constraints between entities and relationships.
5. check to see if you don’t miss anything in spec.

Answer to Question 2
Step 1Entities:
Driver: driver sin, driver name, driver birthdata, driver addr, driver city,
driver postalcode, driver phone
Branch: branch id, branch name, branch addr, branch phone, branch city,
branch postalcode
License: license no, license class, license expiry
Learner license: drivers ed and the inherited attributes from the general li-
cense

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 Driver license: restrictions and the inherited attributes from the general li-
cense
Step 2 Relationships:
owns(license, driver) takes exam(driver,branch):exam date, exam score, exam type
issues(license, branch): issue data
The ”is a” relationshhip : Learner license, Driver license ”is a” license.
Step 3 constraints:
1. a [driver] must <own> (at least one) [license].
2. a [driver] must <take> at least one exam.
3. a [license] must be <owned> by one and only one [driver].
4. a [license] must be <issued> by one and only one [branch].
5. a [branch] must <issue> at least one license
Step 4 Compose ER-diagram: (For creating pretty diagrams, try ”visio” for
windows and ”dia” for linux/unix)
Step 5 Check specification again ........

Question 3
We look at a larger design.
The Prescriptions-R-X chain of pharmacies has offered to give you a free
life-time supply of medicines if you design its database. Given the rising cost of
health care, you agree. Here is the information that you gather.

1. Patients are identified by SSN, and their names, addresses, and also ages.
2. Doctors are identified by an SSN, for each doctor, the name, specialty and
years of experience must be recorded.
3. Each pharmaceutical company is identified by name and has a phone num-
ber.
4. For each drug, the trade name and formula must be recordered. Each
drug is sold by a given pharmaceutical company, and the trade name
identifies a drug uniquely from among the products of that company. If a
pharmaceutical company is deleted, you need not keep track of its products
any longer.
5. Each pharmacy has a name, address, and phone number.
6. Every patient has a primary physician. Every doctor has at least one
patient.
7. Each pharmacy sells several drugs and has a price for each. A drug could
be sold at several pharmacies, and the price could vary from one pharmacy
to another.
8. Doctors prescribe drugs for patients. A doctor could prescribe one or more
drugs for several patients, and a patient could obtain perscriptions from
several doctors. Each prescription has a date and a quantity associated
with it. You can assume that if a doctor prescribes the same drug for the
same patient more than once, only the last such prescription needs to be
stored.

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 learner_license driver_license

restrictions

drivers_ed
ISA

license_class

license_expiry

license

license_no

issue_date

issues
owns

exam_date
driver_sin

branch_id

driver_name

branch_name

driver_
driver takes_exam branch
birthdate

branch_addr

driver_phone

driver_addr

branch_phone

exam_type
exam_score
driver_city
driver_

postalcode

branch_city
branch_

postalcode

Figure 2: Q2-ER diagram for motor-branch

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 9. Pharmaceutical companies have long-term contracts with pharmacies. A
pharmaceutical company can contract with several pharmaceutical com-
panies. For each contract, you have to store a start date, and end date,
and the text of the contract.

10. Pharmacies appoint a supervisor for each contract. There must always a
supervisor for each contract.

-End of the Spec.

Tasks:

1. Draw a ER diagram that captures the above information. Identify and

contraints that are not captured by your ER-diagram.
2. How would your design change if each drug must be sold at a fixed price
by all the pharmacies?
3. How would your design change if the design requirements change as fol-
lows: If a doctor prescribes the same drug for the same patient more than
once, several such prescriptions may have to be stored separately.

Answers to Question 3
Step 1 Identify entities.
Patient: SSN,name,address,age
Doctor: phy ssn, name, specialty, exp years
Pharm Company: name, phone
Drug: tradename, formula
Pharmacy: name, address, phone
Step 2 Identify relationships
Primary Physican(Patient, Doctor)
Prescribe(Patient, Doctor, Drug): date, qty
Sell(Pharmacy, Drug): Price
Contract(Pharmacy, Pharm Co):start date, end date, text, supervisor
Make(Drug, Pharm Co)
Step 3 Constraints
1. a [patient] must and can only have one <Primary Physician >
2. a [drug] must be ¡made¿ by a [pharm co], and only have one maker.
Step 4 ER-Diagram
Step 5 Check spec ............
Discuss Answers 2. put the attribute ”price” to drug.
3. add a prescribe ID to relationship prescribe

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 Primary_Physician Doctor
Patient

date

Prescribe

qty

Price

Make
Pharm_Co Drug Sell

name

start_date
Contract

Pharmacy

end_date

supervisor
text

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Question 4
Imagine that you are a consultant called into the office of a new Australian start-
up called Movies4All. This company admires the success of the Internet Movie
Database (IMDb) in collecting and publishing movie-related information via the
web and thinks that it can set up its own database to rival the IMDb. The pay-
back to Movies4All, they hope, will be advertising revenue once thousands of
people-per-day start to visit their site looking for movie information/trivia/etc.
Putting aside your scepticism of this kind of business model, you ask them
precisely what content and functionality they want in their on-line database.
They suggest that looking at the IMDb (http://www.imdb.com/) would be a
good start.
If you press them further, they’ll tell you that Movies4All should maintain
the following kinds of information:

1. movies: title, cast, crew, story-line, genre, studio, year made/released

2. actors: biographical, photos, films they appeared in, ...
3. crew: occupation (director,cameraman,...), biographical, films, ...
4. studios: contact information, historical information (e.g. heads), ...
5. awards: given to movies or people who work in/on them
6. movie jobs: information about what people like ”gaffers” actually do
7. session times: for movies being screened in cinemas all over the world

All information in the system should be accessible (readable) to anyone on

the Internet. However, Movies4All staff are the only ones who are allowed to
update the database. They also want to provide for registered users of the
system, who can rate movies and post movie reviews. Registered users are also
allowed to provide new information to the Movies4All staff, who will check its
validity and then incorporate it into the site.
Some ideas on the functionality that the system should provide:

1. Movies4All staff and registered users have a username and password for
login authentication
2. Movies4All staff can add, update and (infrequently) delete any information
in the database
3. registered users can rate movies, post reviews, and post suggested changes
to Movies4All staff
4. anyone can search for movies, actors, crew, ... via keyword
5. an advanced search facility allows search by individual aspects of movies/actors/crew/studios
6. every reference to a person/movie/studio is a hyperlink to a page giving
the details

Tasks: You need to analyse the challenge in this design and come up to an
ER-diagram.

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Answer to question 4
For big ER-diagram task. It’s good to do it in a ”divide-and-conquer” way.
We come with entity to entity, relationship to relationship.
Movies

Title
MovieID YearMade

Story Movie Genre

Country RunTime

WebSite

Figure 3: Movies

Write your comments just with the modeling.

Comments:
1. the information here represents the core data about a movie

2. we use a numeric ID as a primary key, since Movies will be heavily referred

to throughout the database

3. every movie must at least have a known title

4. information about classification, etc. (data that is related to a specific
release of a movie) is pushed off into the MovieRelease entity
Movie Releases

Country Rating

Movie Released Movie Release

Starting Finishing

Figure 4: Movie Releases

Comments:
1. a Movie Release is a version of a movie that is issued for showing in some
region of the world

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 2. it may be changed in various ways from the original in the release (e.g. it
may have sub-titles added, or have scenes cut to fit in with a particular
culture)
3. movies are rated to indicate which kind of audience thy are suitable for,
and to indicate restrictions on who is allowed to view the movie
4. movie ratings are determined by an organisation (e.g. Censorship Board)
within each country
5. no Box Office aspects of Movie Releases were included in this model (but
if they had been, they would have been associated with Movie Relseases)

Movie People

PersonID
Birthday

StageName City

Country

Website Movie Person BirthPlace

Gender
Biography Real Name

Figure 5: Move People

Comments:

1. this Entity contains core personal information about people who are in-
volved in the making of movies

2. we use a numeric ID for people, since they are heavily referenced through
the rest of the database

3. the public is interested in biographical details of Movie People, and so

that is the primary information here
4. every person must at least have a know StageName
5. details about their involvement in particular movies and awards won is
handled via relationships with Movies and Awards entities
Photographs
Comments:
1. each photograph may be associated with either a single individual or a
specific movie (but must be associated to at least one)
2. a photo of an actor in a given movie could be involved in both relationships
Movie People and Movies
Awards
Movie Companies
Cinemas

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 PhotoID

Caption
Data

Photo

PictureOf StillFrom

Movie Person Movie

Figure 6: Photographs

Screenings
Users(staff and Members)
News and User Feedback
We gratefully acknowledge that some of the materials are based on those
created by instructors of the equivalent lectures at the University of New South
Wales.

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 Movie Person

IS_A

Actor(ess) Crew JobID

Appears In Works On Move Job Title

Movie Role Movie

Discription

Role_ID Name_In_Movie

Figure 7: Movie People and Movies

Organization Title

Award
Category
AwardID

IS_A

Move Award Individual Award

year

isWinner Nominated For Id_Nominated For isWinner

year

Movie Movie Person

Figure 8: awards

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 CompanyID
Country

Name

Closed

Movie Company
Started
Type

Movie Made By

Figure 9: Movie Companies

CinemaID
Name City

Street

Phone Cinema

Province

Website

Country
#screens

Figure 10: Cinema

ShowTime

Movie Releases Screening Cinema

Figure 11: Screenings

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 User_ID
username

ShowName

User
Password

Name

Location IS_A Email

Staff Member

address Phone
Visit_times score

Figure 12: Users

NewsID
Movie MovieRef

Title URL

News Posted By Staff

Movie Person PersonRef

Posted Comments

ItemID Title Rating

Feed-back GivenBy Member Rate Movie

Comments Comments
Posted1

Figure 13: News and User feedback

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