Chapter 2: Entity-Relationship

Model
 Conceptual Data 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
Conceptual Data Models
 Conceptual data models provide languages to
describe conceptual schemas.
 Conceptual schemas are used to describe the classes
of objects that occur in an application area, their
properties, their relationships, and the constraints
that hold with respect to those classes of objects.
 Center on “what kind of objects a database
contains” and not on “how these objects are stored”
( Internal Schema) and not on “how these objects
are represented / displayed to a person that accesses
the database” ( External Schema).
 Conceptual Data Models ---
What are they good for?
 As a database design tool formalizing the
information requirements of the end users
 As a documentation tool for databases (to
help programmers, especially those that have
to update the database)
 As a data model of a database management
system (only very few experimental systems
exist)
 As a tool to describe domain ontologies
(terminology and concepts in a UoD)
 As a tool of system analysis
Conceptual Data Modeling and
the E-R Diagram
 Goal
 Capture as much of the meaning of the data as
possible
 If you know the rules of normalization,

referential integrity, foreign keys, etc., this is

good but not as important now. It is much
more important to get the organizational data
model correct, i.e. to understand the actual
data requirements for the organization.
 Result
 A better design that is scalable and easier to
maintain
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

 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
 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

 E.g. multivalued attribute: phone-numbers

 Derived attributes

 Can be computed from other attributes

 E.g. age, given date of birth

Composite Attributes
 Relationship Sets
 A relationship is an association among several entities
Example:
Hayes depositor A-102
customer entityrelationship setaccount 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.
HE.g. 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.
 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
 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
 Mapping Cardinalities affect ER Design
n Can make access-date an attribute of account, instead of a relationship
attribute, if each account can have only one customer
n I.e., the relationship from account to customer is many to one, or
equivalently, customer to account is one to many
E-R Diagrams

n Rectangles represent entity sets.

n Diamonds represent relationship sets.
n Lines link attributes to entity sets and entity sets to relationship sets.
n Ellipses represent attributes
n Double ellipses represent multivalued attributes.
n Dashed ellipses denote derived attributes.
n Underline indicates primary key attributes (will study later)
Summary of Symbols Used in E-R Notation
Summary of Symbols (Cont.)
E-R Diagram With Composite,
Multivalued, and Derived Attributes
Relationship Sets with
Attributes
Recursive Relationships
• An entity set can participate more than once in a
relationship
• In this case, we add a description of the role to the
ER-diagram
phone
number
manager

id
Employee Manages
worker
name

address
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.
 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
 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
• E.g. 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.
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.
 E.g. 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 the 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
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

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
 E.g. 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
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
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
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.
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 (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
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

 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
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
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.
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.
 Representing Entity Sets as Tables

 A strong entity set reduces to a table with

the same attributes.
 Composite and Multivalued Attributes
 Composite attributes are flattened out by creating a separate
attribute for each component attribute
 E.g. given entity set customer with composite attribute
name with component attributes first-name and last-name
the table corresponding to the entity set has two attributes
name.first-name and name.last-name
 A multivalued attribute M of an entity E is represented by a
separate table EM
 Table EM has attributes corresponding to the primary key of
E and an attribute corresponding to multivalued attribute M
 E.g. Multivalued attribute dependent-names of employee is
represented by a table
employee-dependent-names( employee-id, dname)
 Each value of the multivalued attribute maps to a separate
row of the table EM
 E.g., an employee entity with primary key John and

dependents Johnson and Johndotir maps to two rows:

(John, Johnson) and (John, Johndotir)
 Representing Weak Entity Sets
n A weak entity set becomes a table that includes a column for
the primary key of the identifying strong entity set
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.
 E.g.: table for relationship set borrower
 Redundancy of Tables
n Many-to-one and one-to-many relationship sets that are total
on the many-side can be represented by adding an extra
attribute to the many side, containing the primary key of the
one side
n E.g.: Instead of creating a table for relationship account-
branch, add an attribute branch to the entity set account
 Redundancy of Tables (Cont.)
 For one-to-one relationship sets, either side can be
chosen to act as the “many” side
 That is, extra attribute can be added to either of
the tables corresponding to the two entity sets
 If participation is partial on the many side, replacing a
table by an extra attribute in the relation
corresponding to the “many” side could result in null
values
 The table corresponding to a relationship set linking a
weak entity set to its identifying strong entity set is
redundant.
 E.g. The payment table already contains the
information that would appear in the loan-payment
table (i.e., the columns loan-number and payment-
number).
Representing Specialization as Tables

 Method 1:
 Form a table for the higher level entity
 Form a table for each lower level entity
set, include primary key of higher level
entity set and local attributes

table table attributes

person name, street, city
customer name, credit-rating
employee name, salary
 Drawback: getting information about, e.g.,
employee requires accessing two tables
Representing Specialization as Tables (Cont.)
Method 2:
 Form a table for each entity set with all local and
inherited attributes
table table attributes
person name, street, city
customer name, street, city, credit-rating
employee name, street, city, salary

 If specialization is total, table for generalized entity

(person) not required to store information
 Can be defined as a “view” relation containing union

of specialization tables
 But explicit table may still be needed for foreign key

constraints
 Drawback: street and city may be stored redundantly for
persons who are both customers and employees
Relations Corresponding to
Aggregation

n To represent aggregation, create a table containing

n primary key of the aggregated relationship,
n the primary key of the associated entity set
n Any descriptive attributes
Relations Corresponding to Aggregation (Cont.)

n E.g. to represent aggregation manages between relationship

works-on and entity set manager, create a table
manages(employee-id, branch-name, title, manager-name)
n Table works-on is redundant provided we are willing to store null
values for attribute manager-name in table manages
 Valid E/R Diagrams
An E/R diagram is valid if and only if:
 It is syntactically correct (e.g. specifies
all key constraints,…)
 It specifies the entity types, relationship
types, attribute types, and subtype
relationships necessary to satisfy all
information requirements.
 It does not specify any invalid
constraints.
 Priorities when Choosing
Between Valid E/R Diagrams
1. Express all constraints (you can express!)
2. Use and do not change terminology and
class structure of the application domain
3. Keep it simple (avoid defining entity types
that do not serve any purpose)
4. Avoid redundancy (but derived attributes are
okay)!
 A Quite Bad E/R
Diagrams


gpa Name
department
(0,*) (0,*)
works-
Person for
Company
gender
wife husband
(0,*)
ssn (0,*) (0,*)
salary takes
(0,*)
is-married-
to
Section S#

time
Course C#
Example: Too many Entity Types /
Don’t use Foreign Keys
Example: Persons as well as animals can be insured

P#
Name

(0,*) (0,*)
is-
Person insured Company
name

ssn (0,*)
Boss-ssn
Bad E/R Diagram!
Animal
A#
 E/R Diagram Design – Typical Errors

1. Missing Constraints
2. Unexpressed Constraints due to bad design
3. Every entity type needs a key
4. Attribute associated with the wrong entity type (relationship type)
5. Relationships are sets!
6. No partial participation in relationships!
7. Missing existence dependencies (use subclasses)
8. Invalid constraints
9. Using Subtypes for n:1 relationships; using relationships when
subtypes should be used.
10. When defining relationships: Too general entity types for participating
entities
11. Too many entity types
12. Using foreign keys instead of relationships
 Other Issues in E/R Design
1. No relationships of relationships --- solution: create
an entity type that represent instances of the
relationship (or use aggregation as discussed in the
textbook)
2. value or entity type --- solution: choose entity type if
it helps expressing constraints; otherwise, use value-
type.
End of Chapter 2