diagram

Ms.V. Saranya AP/CSE Sri vidya college of Engg & Tech, Virudhunagar.

Objectives
To illustrate how relationships between entities are defined and refined. To know how relationships are incorporated into the database design process. To describe how ERD components affect database design and implementation

Topics
Design Process Modeling Constraints E-R Diagram Design Issues Weak Entity Sets Extended E-R Features

DATA unorganized form ex: students score

Information processed, structured and organized data ex: class average which can be calculated from data.

TABLE
A table is a collection (rows) of data on a single related topic.

Difference between table and database

Table A table is an object inside a database a table is a collection (rows) of data on a single related topic. Database A database has tables of data, A database can have 10 or thousands of tables

Ex: employee table Contains only employees detail. But it not contains inventory detail.

But DB is a collection of Employee table as well as inventory table.

Sample Table

Sample Database

DB is a collection related tables

Why we need ER diagram

giving you image of how the tables should connect what fields are going to be on each table the tables connection, if many-tomany, one-to-many. ER diagrams are easy for non-technical people to understand, and thus are typically used by database designers before the schema ever exists

Entity
An entity is something that exists by itself. Entity: Real-world object distinguishable from other objects. An entity is described using a set of attributes.

ssn

name

email

Employees

Examples of entities
Person: EMPLOYEE, STUDENT, PATIENT Place: STORE, WAREHOUSE Object: MACHINE, PRODUCT, CAR Event: SALE,REGISTRATION, RENEWAL Concept: ACCOUNT, COURSE

Entity set
Entity Set: A collection of similar entities. E.g., all employees.

All entities in an entity set have the same set of attributes. Each entity set has a key. Each attribute has a domain.

Example
Association between the instances of one or more entity types

EntityName

Verb Phrase

AttributeName

Person, place, object, event or concept about which data is to be maintained

named property or characteristic of an entity

RELATIONSHIP
Relationship: Association among two or more entities. e.g., rose works in Pharmacy department. Relationship Set: Collection of similar relationships.
Same entity set could participate in different relationship sets, or in different roles in same set.

Relationship Example
Associations between instances of one or more entity types that is of interest Given a name that describes its function. relationship name is an active or a passive verb.

Relationship name: writes Author Book

An author writes one or more books A book can be written by one or more authors.

Degree of Relationships
Degree: number of entity types that participate in a relationship Three cases
Unary: between two instances of one entity type Binary: between the instances of two entity types Ternary: among the instances of three entity types

Attributes
Example of entity types and associated attributes:
STUDENT: Student_ID, Student_Name, Home_Address, Phone_Number, Major

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

A composite attribute

Referential Attributes
Make Reference to another instance in another table
Referential attribute: Ties the lecturer entity to another entity that is department.

Name Ali Mary John Lim Instance of Lecturer.

IdNum 105 106 107 108

DeptID LG IT ENG IT

Email ali@a.com mary@a.com john@a.com lim@a.com

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

 Key and key attributes:

KEY

Super key, candidate key, and primary key

Key: a unique value for an entity Key attributes: a group of one or more attributes that uniquely identify an entity in the entity set Super key: a set of attributes that allows to identify and entity uniquely in the entity set Candidate key: minimal super key

There can be many candidate keys Denoted by underlining in ER attributes.

Primary key: a candidate key chosen by the designer

Key Constraints
Consider Works_In: An employee can work in many departments; a dept can have many employees. In contrast, each dept has at most one manager, according to the key constraint on Manages.

 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

Weak Entity Sets

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 sets discriminator.

 In a relational database, a Weak Entity is an entity that cannot be uniquely identified by its attributes alone; therefore, it must use a foreign key in conjunction with its attributes to create a primary key. The foreign key is typically a primary key of an entity it is related to.

Conceptual design
Conceptual design: (ER Model is used at this stage.)
Process of describing the data, relationships between the data, and the constraints on the data.

Entity-Relationship (ER) Diagram

ER Modeling is a top-down approach to database design. Entity Relationship (ER) Diagram
A detailed, logical representation of the entities, associations and data elements for an organization or business

Notation uses three main constructs

Data entities Relationships Attributes

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 and Connectivity Relationships can be classified as either

one to one one to many many to many
Connectivity

Cardinality : minimum and maximum number of instances of Entity B that can (or must be) associated with each instance of entity A.

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

Connectivity

Chen Model
1 to represent one. M to represent many
1 M

Crows Foot
One many One or many Mandatory one , means (1,1)

Binary Relationships
1:M relationship Relational modeling ideal Should be the norm in any relational database design

The 1: M relationship between PAINTER and PAINTING

Binary Relationships 1:1 relationship Should be rare in any relational database design A single entity instance in one entity class is related to a single entity instance in another entity class Could indicate that two entities actually belong in the same table

The 1:1 Relationship Between PROFESSOR and DEPARTMENT

Binary Relationships
M:N relationships Must be avoided because they lead to data redundancies. Can be implemented by breaking it up to produce a set of 1:M relationships Can avoid problems inherent to M:N relationship by creating a composite entity or bridge entity This will be used to link the tables that were originally related in a M:N relationship The composite entity structure includes-as foreign keys-at least the primary keys of the tables that are to be linked.

The M:N Relationship Between STUDENT and CLASS Bowser Accounting 1 (ACCT-211) Intro to Microcomputing (CIS-220)

Smithson

Intro to Statistics (QM-261)

This CANNOT be implemented as shown next..

Changing the M:N relationship to TWO 1:M relationships

Extended E-R
Specialization Generalization Aggregation

Specialization
Top-down design process: we designate sub groupings within an entity set that are distinctive from other entities in the set. These sub groupings become lower-level entity sets that have attributes or participate in relationships that do not apply to the higherlevel entity set. Depicted by a triangle component labeled ISA 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

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.

 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

Specialization and Generalization (Cont.)

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 : evaluated by an explicit condition or predicate. User-defined : database user assigns

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
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 cant 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

Aggregation (Cont.)
Relationship sets works-on and represent overlapping information manages

Every manages relationship corresponds to a workson relationship However, some works-on relationships may not correspond to any manages relationships we cant discard the works-on relationship

Redundancy problem aggregation

E-R Diagram With Aggregation

Summary of Symbols Used in E-R Notation

Summary of Symbols (Cont.)

Alternative E-R Notations