CHAPTER 2:

MODELING DATA IN THE ORGANIZATION (Data analysis)

Modern Database Management

11th Edition
Jeffrey A. Hoffer, V. Ramesh,
Heikki Topi

© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc.  Publishing as Prentice Hall

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 E-R Model Constructs
 Entities:
 Entity instance–person, place, object, event, concept (often
corresponds to a row in a table)
 Entity Type–collection of entities (often corresponds to a
table)
 Relationships:
 Relationship instance–link between entities (corresponds to
primary key-foreign key equivalencies in related tables)
 Relationship type–category of relationship…link between
entity types
 Attributes:
 Properties or characteristics of an entity or relationship
type (often corresponds to a field in a table)

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 Sample E-R Diagram (Figure 2-1)

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Basic E-R notation (Figure 2-2)

Entity Attribute
symbols symbols

A special entity
that is also a Relationship
relationship symbols

Relationship
degrees specify
number of
entity types Relationship
involved cardinalities
specify how
many of each
entity type is
allowed
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BUSINESS RULES

 Are statements that define or constrain

some aspect of the business
 Are derived from policies, procedures,
events, functions
 Assert business structure
 Control/influence business behavior
 Are expressed in terms familiar to end users
 Are automated through DBMS software

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 ENTITIES
 Entity – a person, a place, an
object, an event, or a concept in the
user environment about which the
organization wishes to maintain data
 Entity type – a collection of entities
that share common properties or
characteristics
 Entity instance – A single
occurrence of an entity type

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ENTITY TYPE AND ENTITY INSTANCES

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 AN ENTITY…
 SHOULD BE:
 An object that will have many
instances in the database
 An object that will be composed of
multiple attributes
 An object that we are trying to model
 SHOULD NOT BE:
 A user of the database system
 An output of the database system
(e.g., a report)

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Figure 2-4 Example of inappropriate entities

System System
user Inappropriate output
entities

Appropriate
entities

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 STRONG VS. WEAK ENTITIES, AND
IDENTIFYING RELATIONSHIPS
 Strong entity
 exists independently of other types of entities
 has its own unique identifier
 identifier underlined with single line
 Weak entity
 dependent on a strong entity (identifying owner)…cannot exist on
its own
 does not have a unique identifier (only a partial identifier)
 entity box and partial identifier have double lines
 Identifying relationship
 links strong entities to weak entities

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Figure 2-5 Example of a weak identity and its identifying relationship

Strong entity Weak entity

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 ATTRIBUTES
 Attribute–property or characteristic of
an entity or relationship type
 Classifications of attributes:
 Required versus Optional Attributes
 Simple versus Composite Attribute
 Single-Valued versus Multivalued Attribute
 Stored versus Derived Attributes
 Identifier Attributes

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REQUIRED VS. OPTIONAL ATTRIBUTES

Required – must have a value for every Optional – may not have a value for
entity (or relationship) instance with every entity (or relationship) instance
which it is associated with which it is associated

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 SIMPLE VS. COMPOSITE ATTRIBUTES

 Composite attribute – An attribute that has

meaningful component parts (attributes)

The address is
broken into
component parts

Figure 2-7 A composite attribute

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 Multi-valued and Derived
Attributes
Multivalued – may take on more than Derived – values can be calculated from
one value for a given entity (or related attribute values (not physically
relationship) instance stored in the database)

Figure 2-8 Entity with multivalued attribute (Skill) and derived attribute
(Years Employed)

Multivalued Derived
an employee can Calculated
have more than one from date
skill employed
and current
date
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 IDENTIFIERS (KEYS)
 Identifier (Key)–an attribute (or
combination of attributes) that
uniquely identifies individual
instances of an entity type
 Simple versus Composite Identifier
 Candidate Identifier–an attribute
that could be a key…satisfies the
requirements for being an identifier

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CRITERIA FOR IDENTIFIERS
 Choose Identifiers that
 Will not change in value
 Will not be null
 Avoid intelligent identifiers (e.g., containing
locations or people that might change)
 Substitute new, simple keys for long,
composite keys

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 Figure 2-9 Simple and composite identifier attributes

The identifier
is boldfaced
and underlined

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 DEFINING ATTRIBUTES
 State what the attribute is and possibly why it is
important
 Make it clear what is and is not included in the
attribute’ s value
 Include aliases in documentation
 State source of values
 Specify required vs. optional
 State min and max number of occurrences allowed
 Indicate relationships with other attributes

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 MODELING RELATIONSHIPS

 Relationship Types vs. Relationship

Instances
 The relationship type is modeled as lines
between entity types…the instance is
between specific entity instances
 Two entities can have more than one
type of relationship between them
(multiple relationships)
 Associative Entity–combination of
relationship and entity

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Figure 2-10 Relationship types and instances

a) Relationship
type (Completes)

b) Relationship
instances

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 DEGREE OF RELATIONSHIPS
 Degree of a relationship is
the number of entity types
that participate in it
 Unary Relationship
 Binary Relationship
 Ternary Relationship

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 Degree of relationships – from Figure 2-2

Entities of
One entity two different
related to types related Entities of three
another of to each other different types
the same
related to each
entity type
other
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 CARDINALITY OF RELATIONSHIPS
 One-to-One
 Each entity in the relationship will have exactly
one related entity
 One-to-Many
 An entity on one side of the relationship can
have many related entities, but an entity on the
other side will have a maximum of one related
entity
 Many-to-Many
 Entities on both sides of the relationship can
have many related entities on the other side

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Figure 2-12 Examples of relationships of different degrees

a) Unary relationships

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Figure 2-12 Examples of relationships of different degrees (cont.)

b) Binary relationships

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Figure 2-12 Examples of relationships of different degrees (cont.)

c) Ternary relationship

Note: a relationship can have attributes of its own

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 CARDINALITY CONSTRAINTS
 Cardinality Constraints—the number of
instances of one entity that can or must
be associated with each instance of
another entity
 Minimum Cardinality
 If zero, then optional
 If one or more, then mandatory
 Maximum Cardinality
 The maximum number

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Figure 2-17 Examples of cardinality constraints

a) Mandatory cardinalities

A patient history is A patient must have recorded

recorded for one and at least one history, and can
only one patient have many

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Figure 2-17 Examples of cardinality constraints (cont.)

b) One optional, one mandatory

A project must be An employee can be assigned

assigned to at least one to any number of projects, or
employee, and may be may not be assigned to any
assigned to many at all

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Figure 2-17 Examples of cardinality constraints (cont.)

c) Optional cardinalities

A person is
married to at most
one other person,
or may not be
married at all

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Figure 2-21 Examples of multiple relationships

a) Employees and departments

Entities can be related to one another in more than one way

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Figure 2-21 Examples of multiple relationships (cont.)

b) Professors and courses (fixed lower limit constraint)

Here, min cardinality constraint is 2. At least two

professors must be qualified to teach each course. Each
professor must be qualified to teach at least one course.

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Figure 2-15a and 2-15b Multivalued attributes can be represented as relationships

simple

composite

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 ASSOCIATIVE ENTITIES
 An entity–has attributes
 A relationship–links entities together
 When should a relationship with attributes instead be an
associative entity?
 All relationships for the associative entity should be many
 The associative entity could have meaning independent of the
other entities
 The associative entity preferably has a unique identifier, and
should also have other attributes
 The associative entity may participate in other relationships
other than the entities of the associated relationship
 Ternary relationships should be converted to associative entities

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Figure 2-11a A binary relationship with an attribute

Here, the date completed attribute pertains specifically to the

employee’s completion of a course…it is an attribute of the
relationship.

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Figure 2-11b An associative entity (CERTIFICATE)

Associative entity is like a relationship with an attribute, but it is

also considered to be an entity in its own right.

Note that the many-to-many cardinality between entities in

Figure 2-11a has been replaced by two one-to-many relationships
with the associative entity.
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 Figure 2-22
Data model for
Pine Valley
Furniture
Company in
Microsoft Visio
notation

Different modeling
software tools may have
different notation for the
same constructs.

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