CHAPTER 2:

MODELING DATA IN THE ORGANIZATION

Modern Database Management

12th Edition
Jeff Hoffer, Ramesh Venkataraman,
Heikki Topi

Copyright © 2016 Pearson Education, Inc.

OBJECTIVES
 Define terms
 Understand importance of data modeling
 Write good names and definitions for entities,
relationships, and attributes
 Distinguish unary, binary, and ternary relationships
 Model different types of attributes, entities, relationships,
and cardinalities
 Draw E-R diagrams for common business situations
 Convert many-to-many relationships to associative
entities
 Model time-dependent data using time stamps

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THE OVERALL STEPS TO ANALYZE, DESIGN AND
IMPLEMENT DATABASES

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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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 A GOOD BUSINESS RULE IS:
 Declarative–what, not how
 Precise–clear, agreed-upon meaning
 Atomic–one statement
 Consistent–internally and externally
 Expressible–structured, natural language
 Distinct–non-redundant
 Business-oriented–understood by
business people

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A GOOD DATA NAME IS:

 Related to business, not technical,

characteristics
 Meaningful and self-documenting

 Unique

 Readable

 Composed of words from an approved list

 Repeatable

 Written in standard syntax

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DATA DEFINITIONS
 Explanation of a term or fact
 Term–word or phrase with specific meaning
 Fact–association between two or more terms

 Guidelines for good data definition

A concise description of essential data meaning
 Gathered in conjunction with systems
requirements
 Accompanied by diagrams

 Achieved by consensus, and iteratively refined

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ENTERPRISE DATABASE MODELING

Business Rules Conceptual Data Model

-Data names (Entity-Relationship Diagram)
-Data definitions

A enterprise data model identifies the highest-level

relationships between the different entities. Features
of enterprise data model include:
 Includes the important entities and the relationships
among them.
 No attribute is specified.

 No
Chapter 2 primary key is specified.
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ENTITY-RELATIONSHIP MODEL

 Entity-Relationship (ER) Model is based on the

notion of real-world entities and relationships
among them.

 ER Model creates entity set, relationship set,

general attributes, and constraints.

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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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 GUIDELINES FOR NAMING AND
DEFINING ENTITIES
 Names:  Definitions:
 Singular noun  “An X is…”
 Specific to organization  Describe unique
characteristics of each
 Concise, or abbreviation instance
 For event entities, the  Explicit about what is and
result not the process is not the entity
 Name consistent for all  When an instance is
diagrams created or destroyed
 Changes to other entity
types
 History that should be kept
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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 an identifier…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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 NAMING ATTRIBUTES
 Name should be a singular noun or noun
phrase
 Name should be unique

 Name should follow a standard format

 e.g. [Entity type name { [ Qualifier ] } ] Class
 Similarattributes of different entity types
should use the same qualifiers and
classes
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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
 State whether attribute value can change once set
 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
 Relationships can have attributes
 These describe features pertaining to the association between
the entities in the relationship
 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
 Entitieson 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
 CardinalityConstraints—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 2-13c An associative entity – bill of materials structure

This could just be a relationship with

attributes…it’s a judgment call.

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Figure 2-18 Cardinality constraints in a ternary relationship

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 Figure 2-19 Simple example of time-stamping

The Price History

Time stamp – a time value that is attribute is both
associated with a data value, often multivalued and
indicating when some event occurred that composite.
affected the data value

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 Figure 2-20c E-R diagram with associative entity for
product assignment to product line over time

The Assignment
Modeling time-dependent data has become associative entity shows
more important due to regulations such as the date range of a
HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley. product’s assignment to a
particular product line.
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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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