The Entity-Relationship Model
Chapter 2
Database Design Process
Requirement collection and analysis
DB requirements and functional requirements
Conceptual DB design using a high-level model
Easier to understand and communicate with others
Logical DB design (data model mapping)
Conceptual schema is transformed from a high-level
data model into implementation data model
Physical DB design
Internal data structures and file organizations for DB
are specified
Overview of Database Design
Conceptual design: (ER Model is used at this stage.)
What are the entities and relationships in the
enterprise?
What information about these entities and
relationships should we store in the database?
What are the integrity constraints or business rules that
hold?
A database `schema’ in the ER Model can be
represented pictorially (ER diagrams).
An ER diagram can be mapped into a relational
schema.
name
ssn
ER Model Basics lot
Employees
Entity: Real-world object distinguishable
from other objects. An entity is described
(in DB) using a set of attributes.
Entity Set: A collection of similar entities.
E.g., all employees.
All entities in an entity set have the same set of
attributes. (Until we consider ISA hierarchies,
anyway!)
Each entity set has a key.
Each attribute has a domain.
name
ssn
ER Model Basics lot
Employees
Key and key attributes:
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, candidate key, and primary key
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
Primary key: a candidate key chosen by the designer
• Denoted by underlining in ER attributes
name
ER Model Basics (Contd.) ssn lot
since Employees
name dname
super- subor-
ssn lot did budget visor dinate
Reports_To
Employees Works_In Departments
Relationship: Association among two or more entities.
e.g., Jack works in Pharmacy department.
Relationship Set: Collection of similar relationships.
An n-ary relationship set R relates n entity sets E1 ... En;
each relationship in R involves entities e1 in E1, ..., en in En
• Same entity set could participate in different
relationship sets, or in different “roles” in same set.
Key Constraints name
since
dname
ssn lot did budget
Consider Works_In:
Employees Manages Departments
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
1-to-1 1-to Many Many-to-1 Many-to-Many
key constraint on
Manages.
Example ER major Department
offers
• An ER diagram
represents several faculty
Courses
assertions about the real
world. What are they?
Professor teaches
• When attributes are
added, more assertions
are made. advisor
enrollment
• How can we ensure they
are correct? Students
• A DB is judged correct if
it captures ER diagram
correctly.
Exercises major Department
offers
• Is double major allowed?
• Can a student have more faculty
Courses
than 1 advisor?
• Is joint appointment of teaches
Professor
faculty possible?
• Can two profs share to
advisor
teach the same course? enrollment
• Can a professor teach
Students
more than one course?
• Can a professor stay
without affiliated with a
department?
Participation Constraints
Does every department have a manager?
If so, this is a participation constraint: the participation of
Departments in Manages is said to be total (vs. partial).
• Every Departments entity must appear in an instance of the
Manages relationship.
since
name dname
ssn lot did budget
Employees Manages Departments
Works_In
since
1
Weak Entities
A weak entity can be identified uniquely only by considering
the primary key of another (owner) entity.
Owner entity set and weak entity set must participate in a one-
to-many relationship set (one owner, many weak entities).
Weak entity set must have total participation in this identifying
relationship set.
name
cost pname age
ssn lot
Employees Policy Dependents
1
name
ssn lot
ISA (`is a’) Hierarchies Employees
As in C++, or other PLs, hourly_wages hours_worked ISA
attributes are inherited. contractid
If we declare A ISA B, every A
Hourly_Emps Contract_Emps
entity is also considered to be a B
entity.
Overlap constraints: Can Joe be an Hourly_Emps as well as
a Contract_Emps entity? (default: disallowed; A overlaps B)
Covering constraints: Does every Employees entity also have
to be an Hourly_Emps or a Contract_Emps entity? (default:
no; A AND B COVER C)
Reasons for using ISA:
To add descriptive attributes specific to a subclass.
To identify entities that participate in a relationship.
1
name
ssn lot
Aggregation Employees
Used when we have
to model a Monitors until
relationship
involving (entitity
since
sets and) a started_on
dname
relationship set. pid pbudget did budget
Aggregation allows us
Projects Sponsors Departments
to treat a relationship
set as an entity set
for purposes of Aggregation vs. ternary relationship:
participation in Monitors is a distinct relationship,
(other) relationships.
with a descriptive attribute.
Also, can say that each sponsorship
is monitored by at most one employee.
1
Conceptual Design Using the ER Model
Design choices:
Should a concept be modeled as an entity or an
attribute?
Should a concept be modeled as an entity or a
relationship?
Identifying relationships: Binary or ternary?
Aggregation?
Constraints in the ER Model:
A lot of data semantics can (and should) be captured.
But some constraints cannot be captured in ER
diagrams.
1
Entity vs. Attribute
Should address be an attribute of Employees or an
entity (connected to Employees by a relationship)?
Depends upon the use we want to make of address
information, and the semantics of the data:
• If we have several addresses per employee, address
must be an entity (since attributes cannot be set-
valued).
• If the structure (city, street, etc.) is important, e.g., we
want to retrieve employees in a given city, address
must be modeled as an entity (since attribute values
are atomic).
1
Entity vs. Attribute (Contd.)
from to
Works_In4 does not name dname
ssn lot did
allow an employee to budget
work in a department Departments
Employees Works_In4
for two or more
periods.
Similar to the problem
of wanting to record
several addresses for an name dname
employee: We want to ssn lot did budget
record several values of
Employees Works_In4 Departments
the descriptive attributes
for each instance of this
relationship. from Duration to
Accomplished by
introducing new entity
set, Duration. 1
Entity vs. Relationship
First ER diagram OK if
since dbudget
a manager gets a name dname
separate discretionary ssn lot did budget
budget for each dept.
Employees Manages2 Departments
What if a manager gets
a discretionary name
budget that covers ssn lot
all managed depts? since dname
Redundancy: dbudget Employees did budget
stored for each dept
managed by manager. Manages2 Departments
ISA
Misleading: Suggests
dbudget associated with
department-mgr Managers dbudget
This fixes the
combination. problem!
1
Binary vs. Ternary Relationships
name
ssn lot pname age
If each policy is Employees Covers Dependents
owned by just 1
employee, and Bad design Policies
each dependent
policyid cost
is tied to the
name pname
covering policy, ssn lot
age
first diagram is Dependents
Employees
inaccurate.
What are the Purchaser
Beneficiary
additional
constraints in the
Better design Policies
2nd diagram?
policyid cost
1
Binary vs. Ternary Relationships (Contd.)
Previous example illustrated a case when two
binary relationships were better than one ternary
relationship.
An example in the other direction: a ternary
relation Contracts relates entity sets Parts,
Departments and Suppliers, and has descriptive
attribute qty. No combination of binary
relationships is an adequate substitute:
S “can-supply” P, D “needs” P, and D “deals-with” S
does not imply that D has agreed to buy P from S.
How do we record qty?
1
Summary of Conceptual Design
Conceptual design follows requirements analysis,
Yields a high-level description of data to be stored
ER model popular for conceptual design
Constructs are expressive, close to the way people think
about their applications.
Basic constructs: entities, relationships, and attributes
(of entities and relationships).
Some additional constructs: weak entities, ISA
hierarchies, and aggregation.
Note: There are many variations on ER model.
2
Summary of ER (Contd.)
Several kinds of integrity constraints can be expressed
in the ER model: key constraints, participation
constraints, and overlap/covering constraints for ISA
hierarchies. Some foreign key constraints are also
implicit in the definition of a relationship set.
Some constraints (notably, functional dependencies) cannot be
expressed in the ER model.
Constraints play an important role in determining the best
database design for an enterprise.
2
Summary of ER (Contd.)
ER design is subjective. There are often many ways
to model a given scenario! Analyzing alternatives
can be tricky, especially for a large enterprise.
Common choices include:
Entity vs. attribute, entity vs. relationship, binary or n-
ary relationship, whether or not to use ISA hierarchies,
and whether or not to use aggregation.
Ensuring good database design: resulting
relational schema should be analyzed and refined
further. FD information and normalization
techniques are especially useful.
2
Exercise
name
ssn addr acct# balance
What can you Customer CustAcct Account
say about
policy of the
bank from the
ER diagram? ssn
name
lot
What can you Employees
say about the Manages
policy of the
company? Dept
deptid budget
2
Design Exercise
Design a DB using ER, and sketch the resulting diagram. State
any important assumptions you made in reaching the design.
Show explicitly whether relationships are 1-1, 1-M, or N-M.
UVA registrar’s office: It maintains data about each class,
including the instructor, students, enrollment, time and
place of the class meetings. For each student-class pair, a
grade is recorded.
Hospital: It maintains all patients visited, including age and
address. It also keeps track of the information about billing,
visits, data, reason for visit, and treatment.
