Solutions to selected Study Guide Review Questions

and Review Exercises

Module 2
Review question 2 1
8.

Four criteria for selecting identifiers for entities:

a.
Choose an identifier that will not change its value over the life of each
instance of the entity type.
b.
Choose an identifier such that for each instance of the entity the attribute
is guaranteed to have valid values and not be null (or unknown).
c.
Avoid the use of so-called intelligent identifiers (or keys), whose structure
indicates classifications, locations, and so on.
a.
Consider substituting single-attribute surrogate identifiers for large
composite identifiers.

9.

Three conditions that suggest the designer should model a relationship as an

associative entity type are:
a.
All of the relationships for the participating entity types are many
relationships.
b.
The resulting associative entity type has independent meaning to end
users, and it preferably can be identified with a single-attribute identifier.
c.
The associative entity has one or more attributes in addition to the
identifier.

10.

Four types of cardinality constraints are:

a.
Optional one:

b.

Mandatory one:

c.

Optional many:

d.

Mandatory many:

11.

PHONE CALL (see below) is an example of a weak entity because a phone call
must be placed by a PERSON. Because in this simple example, PHONE CALL is
related to only one other entity type, it is not necessary to show the identifying
relationship; however, if this data model were ever expanded so that PHONE
CALL related to other entity types, it is good practice to always indicate the
identifying relationship.

13.

Attribute examples:
a.
Derived distance (rate x time)
b.
Multivalued spoken language
c.
Composite flight ID (flight number + date)

14.

Examples of relationships:
a.
Ternary

b.

Unary

16. When the attribute is the identifier or some other characteristic of an entity type in the
data model, and multiple entity instances need to share these same attributes.

Review question 2 2
4.

Two conditions that indicate a designer should consider using supertype/subtype

relationships:
a.
There are attributes that apply to some (but not all) of the instances of an
entity type.
b.
The relationships that apply to some (but not all) of the instances of an
entity type..

5.

The reasons for entity clustering are:

a.
Complex enterprise-wide E-R diagram.
b.
Ability to have a hierarchical decomposition of data model.
c.
Desire to focus part of the model on an area of interest to some community
of users.
d.
Ability to create several different entity clusters each with a different
focus.

6.

An example of a supertype/subtype relationship:

The supertype PERSON has many possible subtypes: MALE, FEMALE,
INFANT, TEENAGER, etc, assuming these different types of persons have
somewhat different attributes or participate in different relationships. In an
organizational context, PERSON may have subtypes of EMPLOYEE,
CONTRACTOR, CUSTOMER, VENDOR, MANAGER, etc.

7.

Give an example of a(n):

a.
Structural assertion: a person is a customer of a store.

b.

Action assertion: a customer must have a credit limit greater than zero in
order to charge a purchase.

11.

Attribute inheritance is the property that subtype entities inherit values of all
attributes of their supertype(s). This property is important because it makes it
unnecessary to include supertype attributes redundantly with subtypes.

12.

Give examples of:

a.
Supertype/subtype relationship where the disjoint rule applies: PERSON
has subtypes MALE and FEMALE.
b.
Supertype/subtype relationship where the overlap rule applies: PERSON
has subtypes INSTRUCTOR and STUDENT.

13.

The types of business rules that are normally captured in an EER diagram include
terms, relationship constraints, and supertype/subtype relationships (see Figure 411).

14.
The purpose of a subtype discriminator is to determine the target subtype (or
subtypes) for each instance of a supertype.
17. A subtype/supertype hierarchy is useful when you have several subtypes that are also
supertypes. An example would be for bank accounts. At the first level, you can have
savings, checking and loans. Underneath loans, there are several subtypes, including
personal, auto, home, etc.
18. A member of a supertype is always a member of at least one subtype when the rule of
total specialization applies to an EERD.
19.
a. An order contains many products and a product can be part of many
orders. This fact is shown as the order_line associative entity in Figure 412.
b. An employee can be either management or union, but not both. This is
shown by a subtype/supertype relationship in Figure 4-12.
c. A union employee can work in many work centers and a work center can
have many union employees. This is shown by the Works_in relationship
in Figure 4-12.
d. A regular customer does business in a sales territory, while a national
customer does not do business in a particular sales territory. This is shown
in the subtype/supertype relationship for Customer in Figure 4-12.
e. An employee can have many skills. This is shown as a multivalued
attribute in Figure 4-12.
20. A few derived facts for Pine Valley Furniture:
f. An order is supplied by one or more suppliers. This can be derived from
the order_line, uses and supplies relationships in Figure 4-12.

g. The order total is calculated by adding the product of the quantity times
the price for each order_line for a given order.
h. An order is produced in one or more work centers. This can be derived
from the produced_in relationship and order_line associative entity in
Figure 4-12.
i. An order is worked on by one or more employees. This can be derived
from the produced_in relationship, the order_line associative entity and
the works in relationship in Figure 4-12.
j. An order includes one or more product lines. This can be derived from the
order_line associative entity and the includes relationship in Figure 4-12.

Review exercise 2 1
2. A term is a word or phrase that has a specific meaning for a business. An example of
a term might be course. A fact is an association between two or more terms. An
example of a fact is the following (the terms are underlined):
A customer may request a model of car from a rental branch on a particular date.
4.
a.

b.

c.

d.

Section is modeled here as a weak entity. It could have been modeled as a multivalued
attribute; however, using a weak entity is better, since section may have a relationship
with another entity. A multivalued attribute could not be used to show this relationship.