Chapter 5: Entity-Relationship Model

Chapter 5: Entity-Relationship Model

• Design Process
• Modeling
• Constraints
• E-R Diagram
• Design Issues
• Weak Entity Sets
• Extended E-R Features
• Design of the Bank Database
• Reduction to Relation Schemas
• Database Design
• UML
 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 instructor and student

instructor_ID instructor_name student-ID student_name

 Relationship Sets
• A relationship is an association among several entities
Example:
44553 (Peltier) advisor 22222 (Einstein)
student entity relationship set instructor 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:
(44553,22222)  advisor
Relationship Set advisor
 Relationship Sets (Cont.)
• An attribute can also be property of a relationship set.
• For instance, the advisor relationship set between entity sets
instructor and student may have the attribute date which tracks
when the student started being associated with the advisor
 Degree of a Relationship Set

• binary relationship
• involve two entity sets (or degree two).
• most relationship sets in a database system are binary.
• Relationships between more than two entity sets are
rare. Most relationships are binary. (More on this later.)
Example: students work on research projects under the
guidance of an instructor.
relationship proj_guide is a ternary relationship between
instructor, student, and project
 Attributes
• An entity is represented by a set of attributes, that is
descriptive properties possessed by all members of an
entity set.
• Example:
instructor has attributes (ID, name, street, city, salary )
course has attributes (course_id, title, credits)
• Domain – the set of permitted values for each attribute
• Attribute types:
• Simple and composite attributes.
• Single-valued and multivalued 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
• ID is candidate key of instructor
• course_id is candidate key of course
• 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.
• (s_id, i_id) is the super key of advisor
• 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 multiple meeting dates between
a student and her advisor, we cannot assume a relationship
for each meeting. 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
Redundant Attributes
• Suppose we have entity sets
• instructor, with attributes including dept_name
• department
and a relationship
• inst_dept relating instructor and department
• Attribute dept_name in entity instructor is redundant
since there is an explicit relationship inst_dept which
relates instructors to departments
• The attribute replicates information present in the relationship,
and should be removed from instructor
• BUT: when converting back to tables, in some cases the
attribute gets reintroduced, as we will see.
E-R Diagrams

 Rectangles represent entity sets.

 Diamonds represent relationship sets.
 Attributes listed inside entity rectangle
 Underline indicates primary key attributes
Entity With Composite, Multivalued, and Derived Attributes
Relationship Sets with Attributes
 Roles
• Entity sets of a relationship need not be distinct
• Each occurrence of an entity set plays a “role” in the
relationship
• The labels “course_id” and “prereq_id” are called roles.
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 student is associated with at most one instructor via the
relationship advisor
• A student is associated with at most one department via
stud_dept
 One-to-One Relationship
• one-to-one relationship between an instructor and a
student
• an instructor is associated with at most one student via advisor
• and a student is associated with at most one instructor via advisor
 One-to-Many Relationship

• one-to-many relationship between an instructor and a

student
• an instructor is associated with several (including 0) students via
advisor
• a student is associated with at most one instructor via advisor,
 Many-to-One Relationships

• In a many-to-one relationship between an instructor and a

student
• an instructor is associated with at most one student via advisor,
• and a student is associated with several (including 0) instructors
via advisor
 Many-to-Many Relationship

• An instructor is associated with several (possibly 0) students

via advisor
• A student is associated with several (possibly 0) instructors via
advisor
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 section in sec_course is total
 every section must have an associated course
 Partial participation: some entities may not
participate in any relationship in the relationship set
 Example: participation of instructor in advisor 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 proj_guide to instructor indicates each
student has at most one guide for a project
• 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
How about doing an ER design
interactively on the board?
Suggest an application to be
modeled.
 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 underline the discriminator of a weak entity set with a

dashed line.
• We put the identifying relationship of a weak entity in a
double diamond.
• Primary key for section – (course_id, sec_id, semester, year)
 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 course_id were explicitly stored, section could be
made a strong entity, but then the relationship between
section and course would be duplicated by an implicit
relationship defined by the attribute course_id common
to course and section
E-R Diagram for a University Enterprise
Reduction to Relational Schemas
 Reduction to Relation Schemas
• Entity sets and relationship sets can be expressed
uniformly as relation schemas that represent the contents
of the database.
• A database which conforms to an E-R diagram can be
represented by a collection of schemas.
• For each entity set and relationship set there is a unique
schema that is assigned the name of the corresponding
entity set or relationship set.
• Each schema has a number of columns (generally
corresponding to attributes), which have unique names.
 Representing Entity Sets With Simple
Attributes
• A strong entity set reduces to a schema with the same attributes

• A weak entity set becomes a table that includes a column for the
primary key of the identifying strong entity set

course(ID, name, tot_cred)

section ( course_id, sec_id, sem, year )

 Representing Relationship Sets
• A many-to-many relationship set is represented as a
schema with attributes for the primary keys of the two
participating entity sets, and any descriptive attributes
of the relationship set.
• Example: schema for relationship set advisor

advisor(s_id, i_id)
 Representing Relationship Sets (Cont.)
 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
 Example: add an attribute dept_name to the schema arising
from entity set instructor

Instructor(id, name, salary, dept_name)

Representing Relationship Sets (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
schema by an extra attribute in the schema corresponding
to the “many” side could result in null values
• The schema corresponding to a relationship set linking a
weak entity set to its identifying strong entity set is
redundant.
• Example: The section schema already contains the attributes that
would appear in the sec_course schema
Composite and Multivalued Attributes
• Composite attributes are flattened out by
creating a separate attribute for each
component attribute
• Example: given entity set instructor with
composite attribute name with component
attributes first_name and last_name the
schema corresponding to the entity set has
two attributes name_first_name and
name_last_name
• Prefix omitted if there is no ambiguity
• Ignoring multivalued attributes, extended
instructor schema is
• instructor(ID, first_name, middle_initial,
last_name, street_number, street_name,
apt_number, city, state, zip_code,
date_of_birth)
 Composite and Multivalued Attributes
• A multivalued attribute M of an entity E is
represented by a separate schema EM
• Schema EM has attributes corresponding to the primary
key of E and an attribute corresponding to multivalued
attribute M
• Example: Multivalued attribute phone_number of
instructor is represented by a schema:
inst_phone( ID, phone_number)
• Each value of the multivalued attribute maps to a
separate tuple of the relation on schema EM
• For example, an instructor entity with primary key 22222
and phone numbers 456-7890 and 123-4567 maps to two
tuples:
ID, phone_number
(22222, 456-7890) and
(22222, 123-4567)
Design Issues

• Use of entity sets vs. attributes

• Use of phone as an entity allows extra information

about phone numbers (plus multiple phone numbers)
Design Issues

• Use of entity sets vs. relationship sets

Possible guideline is to designate a relationship set to
describe an action that occurs between entities
 Design Issues

• 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
e.g., attribute date as attribute of advisor or as attribute
of student
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: proj_guide
 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
Extended ER Features
 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.,
instructor “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 instructor vs. secretary
• Each particular employee would be
• a member of one of permanent_employee or
temporary_employee,
• and also a member of one of instructor, secretary
• 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 having multiple lower-level entity sets link to the
same triangle
• Overlapping
• an entity can belong to more than one lower-level entity set.
• Example: Student and Employee as specifications of Person. Using two
separate arrows in E-R diagram.
Design Constraints on a
Specialization/Generalization (Cont.)
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.
In ERD, it is represented by adding a keyword “total” in the
diagram and drawing a dashed line from the keyword to the
corresponding hollow arrow-head to which it applies (for a total
generalization), or to the set of hollow arrow-heads to which it
applies (for an overlapping generalization).
• Partial (default): an entity need not belong to one of the lower-
level entity sets

Total
 Aggregation
Consider the ternary relationship proj_guide, which we saw
earlier
 Suppose we want to record evaluations of a student by a
guide on a project
 Aggregation (Cont.)
• Relationship sets eval_for and proj_guide represent
overlapping information
• Every eval_for relationship corresponds to a proj_guide
relationship
• However, some proj_guide relationships may not correspond to
any eval_for relationships
• So we can’t discard the proj_guide relationship
• Eliminate this redundancy via aggregation
• Treat relationship as an abstract entity
• Allows relationships between relationships
• Abstraction of relationship into new entity
 Aggregation (Cont.)
• Without introducing redundancy, the following diagram
represents:
• A student is guided by a particular instructor on a particular project
• A student, instructor, project combination may have an associated
evaluation
Representing Specialization via Relational
Schemas
• Method 1:
• Form a relational schema for the higher-level entity
• Form a schema for each lower-level entity set, include
primary key of higher-level entity set and local attributes
schema attributes
person ID, name, street, city
student ID, tot_cred
employee ID, salary

• Drawback: getting information about, an employee

requires accessing two relations, the one corresponding
to the low-level schema and the one corresponding to
the high-level schema
Representing Specialization as Schemas
(Cont.)
• Method 2:
• Form a relational schema for each entity set with all local and
inherited attributes
schema attributes
person ID, name, street, city
student ID, name, street, city, tot_cred
employee ID, name, street, city, salary
• If specialization is total, the schema for the generalized entity
set (person) not required to store information
• Can be defined as a “view” relation containing union of
specialization relations
• But explicit schema may still be needed for foreign key constraints
• Drawback: name, street and city may be stored redundantly for
people who are both students and employees
Schemas Corresponding to Aggregation

 To represent aggregation, create a relational

schema containing
 primary key of the aggregated relationship,
 the primary key of the associated entity set
 any descriptive attributes
Schemas Corresponding to Aggregation (Cont.)
 For example, to represent aggregation manages between
relationship works_on and entity set manager, create a schema
eval_for (s_ID, project_id, i_ID, evaluation_id)
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.
How about doing another
ER design interactively on
the board?
Summary of Symbols Used in E-R Notation
Symbols Used in E-R Notation (Cont.)
Alternative ER Notations
Alternative ER Notations
Chen IDE1FX (Crows feet notation)
End of Chapter 5