What is a Database Management

System?
Spring 2008

Lecture slides by Dr. Sara Cohen

1
 What and Why

• A database management system is a

program used to:
– Store large amounts of data
– Allow easy access to the data (using a query
language)
– Separate the physical schema from the logical
schema

2
 What and Why

– Protect the data from corruption or security leaks

– Allow multiple users to access the data
simultaneously
– Provide crash recovery
– And more…

3
Entity-Relationship Diagrams

Spring 2008

4
 Scenario
• http://www.imdb.com wants to store information about
movies and has chosen you to help them
• Three steps:
– Requirements Analysis: Discover what information needs to be
stored, how the stored information will be used, etc. Taught in
course on system analysis and design
– Conceptual Database Design: High level description of data to be
stored (ER model)
– Logical Database Design: Translation of ER diagram to a relational
database schema (description of tables)
– Physical Database Design: Done by the DB system

5
 Requirements (1)
• For actors and directors, we want to store their name,
a unique identification number, address and birthday
(why not age?)
• For actors, we also want to store a photograph
• For films, we want to store the title, year of production
and type (thriller, comedy, etc.)
• We want to know who directed and who acted in each
film. Every film has one director. We store the salary
of each actor for each film

6
 Requirements (2)
• An actor can receive an award for his part in a film.
We store information about who got which award for
which film, along with the name of the award and
year.
• We also store the name and telephone number of
the organization who gave the award. Two different
organizations can give an award with the same
name. A single organization does not give more than
one award with a particular name per year.

7
 address

birthday id

Movie Person
phone name
name
number
In the rest of
Organization this lesson we ISA

explain this
Gives diagram
picture Actor Director

Won
salary
Acted In Directed
Award

year Film
year name

title type
8
 ER-Diagrams: General Information

• ER-diagrams are a formalism to model real-world scenarios

• There are many versions of ER-diagrams that differ both in
their appearance and in their meaning
• We will use the version appearing in the course book
(Database Management Systems by Ramakrishnan)
• ER-diagrams have a formal semantics (meaning) that must
be thoroughly understood, in order to create correct
diagrams

9
 Entities, Entity Sets
• Entity (‫)ישות‬: An object in the world that can be
distinguished from other objects
– Examples of entities:

– Examples of things that are not entities:

• Entity set (‫)קבוצת ישויות‬: A set of similar entities

– Examples of entity sets:

 Entity sets are drawn as rectangles

10
 Attributes

• Attributes (‫)תכונות‬: Used to describe

entities
– All entities in the set have the same attributes
– A minimal set of attributes that uniquely identify
an entity is called a key
– An attribute contains a single piece of
information (and not a list of data)

11
 Attributes (2)

• Examples of attributes:

• Examples of things that cannot be

attributes:

 Attributes are drawn using ovals

 The names of the attributes which make
up a key are underlined
12
 Example

birthday
id
Actor

name address

13
Another Option for a Key?

birthday
id
Actor

name address

14
Another Option for a Key?

birthday
id
Actor

name address

15
 Relationships, Relationship Sets

• Relationship (‫)קשר‬: Association among two or

more entities
– Relationships may have attributes
– Examples of Relationships:

• Relationship Set (‫)קבוצת קשרים‬: Set of similar

relationships
– Examples of Relationship sets:

 Relationship sets are drawn using diamonds

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 Example

title
birthday

id
Actor Acted In Film year

name

address type

Where does the salary salary

attribute belong?
17
 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

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 n-ary Relationship
• An n-ary relationship R set involves exactly n entity
sets: E1, …, En.
• Each relationship in R involves exactly n entities:
e1 in E1, …, en in En
• Formally, R E1x …x En

id Director name

id
Actor Produced Film title

name
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 Example
• Suppose that there are:
– Actors: Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck
– Directors: Big Bird, Kermit
– Films: Mickey’s Club How many triplets can be in the
How many pairs can be in the relationship set “Produced”?
relationship set “Produced”?

id Director name

id
Actor Produced Film title

name
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Another Option: Remember
Recursive Relationships

21
 Important Note
• The entities in a relationship set must identify the
relationship
• Attributes of the relationship set cannot be used
for identification!
• Suppose we wanted to store the role of an actor
in a film.
– How should we store the role of the actor?
– How would we store information about a person who
acted in one film in several roles?

id
Actor Acted In Film title

name
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 Key Constraints (‫)אילוצי מפתח‬

• Key constraints specify whether an entity can participate in

one, or more than one, relationships in a relationship set
• When there is no key constraint an entity can participate
any number of times
• When there is a key constraint, the entity can participate at
most one time
 Key constraints are drawn using an arrow from the entity
set to the relationship set

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 One-to-Many
 A film is directed by at most one director
 A director can direct any number of films

id
Director Directed Film title

name

Director Directed Film 24

 Many-to-Many
 A film is directed by any number of directors
 A director can direct any number of films

id
Director Directed Film title

name

Director Directed Film 25

 One-to-One
 A film is directed by at most one director
 A director can direct at most one film

id
Director Directed Film title

name

Director Directed Film 26

 Another Example

Where would you put the arrow?

age
father

id
Person FatherOf
child
name

27
 Key Constraints in
Ternary Relationships

id Actor name

id
Director produced Film title

name

What does this mean?

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 Participation Constraints
‫))אילוצי השתתפות‬
• Participation constraints specify whether or not an
entity must participate in a relationship set
• When there is no participation constraint, it is
possible that an entity will not participate in a
relationship set
• When there is a participation constraint, the entity
must participate at least once
 Participation constraints are drawn using a thick
line from the entity set to the relationship set

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 Example (1)
• A film has at lease one director
• A director can direct any number of films

id
Director Directed Film title

name

Do you think
that there
should be a
participation
constraint
from Director
to Directed? Director Directed Film 30
 Example (2)

• We can combine key and participation constraints.

• What does this diagram mean?

id
Director Directed Film title

name

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 Storing Award Information

• What do you think of this?

org_
name Won
Award
phone
number year name

• To model this correctly we need weak entity sets

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 Weak Entity Sets

• Weak entity sets are entity sets that are not

uniquely identified by their attributes
• A weak entity set has an "identifying
relationship" with an entity set that is the
"identifying owner" of the weak entity set

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 Weak Entity Sets

A weak entity set must:

– participate fully in the identifying
relationship ( a thick line)
– participate in a one to many relationship
with the identifying owner ( an arrow)
 Weak entity sets have a thick rectangle,
their keys are underlined with a broken
line, and the identifying relationship has a
thick diamond
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 Example
phone
name
number

Organization

What would be
the meaning if Gives

this was not a

Won
thick line?
Award

year name

35
 Example
‫גדוד‬
‫מספר גדוד‬
‫שייכת ל‬

How
Howarearethe
the
entity
entitysets
sets ‫אות פלוגה‬ ‫פלוגה‬
??identified
identified
‫שייכת ל‬

‫מחלקה‬

‫מספר מחלקה‬

36
 Example

• Suppose that you were storing information

about books.
• Should books be modeled as a weak entity
set or a regular entity set?
– Does ISBN identify a book
– The answer: it depends what type of data you
are interested in storing!

37
Copies of Books in Libraries

name Library Owned By

author

title Book
id
isbn

Person
Copy Of

Borrowed
Copy

copy number condition

38
 ISA Hierarchies

ISA Relationships: Define a hierarchy

between entity sets
– ISA is similar to inheritance
 ISA relationships are drawn as a triangle with
the word ISA inside it. The "super entity-set" is
above the triangle and the "sub entity-sets" are
below

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 Example
What are the
keys of:
address
id 1. Movie Person
birthday
Movie Person 2. Actor
name
3. Director

ISA

picture Actor Director

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 Overlap Constraints

• Overlap constraints: Determine whether

two sub-entity sets can contain the same
entity
– Example: Can an Actor be a Director?
 Write "Actor OVERLAPS Director". If not
written, assume no overlap

41
 Covering Constraints

• Covering constraints: Determine whether

every entity in the super-entity set is also in
at least one of the sub-entity sets
– Example: Is every movie person either an Actor
or a Director?
 Write "Actor AND Director COVER Movie
Person". If not written, assume no covering

42
 Aggregation

• Aggregation: Allows us to indicate that a

relationship set participates in a relationship
set

• Remember, we want to store information

about Actors, Films and their award. We will
see why aggregation is needed for this…
43
What’s Wrong?
All the actors for all
their participation in
all the films must get
picture Actor
an award!

salary
Acted In Award

year Film

title type

44
What’s Wrong?
An actor may get an
award for a film in
which he has never
picture Actor
acted in!

salary
Acted In Won Award

year Film

title type

45
 SupposeThe Solution
that there are:
3 actors
2 films
4 awards
How many pairs can there be in ActedIn?
How many pairs can there be in Won?
Note that the pairs of Won are of a special type

picture Actor

Won salary
Acted In
Award

year Film

title type

46
Final Diagram address

birthday id

Movie Person
phone name
name
number

Organization ISA

Gives picture Actor Director

Won
salary
Acted In Directed
Award

year Film
year name

title type
47
 References

• “Database Management Systems”, by

Raghu Ramakrishnan & Johannes Gehrke,
third edition, McGraw-Hill, 2003.
Chapters: 2

48
 Assignment #2
• In the Ramakrishnan book, exercises 2.2 and 2.3 (Chapter 2). – page 52.:
• Exercise 2.2:
– A university DB contains information about professors (identified by social security
number, or SSN) and courses (identified by courseid). Professors teach courses;
each of the following situations concerns the Teachers relationship set. For each
situation, draw an ER diagram that describes it (assuming no further constraints
hold).
• Professors can teach the same course in several semesters, and each ofering must be
recorded.
• Professors can teach the same course in several semesters, and only the most recent such
offering needs to be recorded. (Assume this condition applies in all subsequent questions.)
• Every professor must teach some course.
• Every professor teaches exactly one course.
• Every professor teaches exactly one course, and every course must be taught by some
professor.
• Now suppose that certain courses can be taught by a team of professors jointly, but it is
possible that no one professor in a team can teach the course.

49
 Assignment #2
• Exercise 2.3:
– Design and draw ER diagram capturing all the following constraints
regarding an university DB:
• Professors have an SSN, a name, an age, a rank, and a research specialty.
• Projects have a project number, a sponsor name, a starting date, an ending
date, and a budget.
• Graduate students have an SSN, a name, an age, and a degree program (M.S.
or Ph.D.)
• Each project is managed by one professor (known as the project’s principal
investigator).
• Each project is worked on by one or more professors (known as the project’s co-
investigators).
• Professors can manage and/or work on multiple projects.
• Each project is worked on by one or more graduate students (the project’s
research assistants).

50
 Assignment #2
• Exercise 2.3 – cont.:
• When grad. students work on a project, a professor must supervise their
work on the project. Grad. Students may work on many projects (in this
case they may have more than one supervisor).
• Departments have a department number, name, and a main office.
• Departments have a professor, who runs the department.
• Professors work in one or more departments, and for each department
that they work in, a time percentage is associated with their job.
• Grad. students have one major department in which they are working
on their degree.
• Each grad. Student has another, more senior grad. student (a student
advisor) who advises him/her on what courses to take.

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