Carlos Vicente E.

Torralba December 2, 2017

Theory of Database Systems BSIT 221

ENTITY RELATIONSHIP MODEL

I. Entity Relationship (ER) means:

- is a type of flowchart that illustrates how entities such as people, objects or concepts relate
to each other within a system (lucidchart.com)
- shows the relationships of entity sets stored in a database. An entity in this context is a
component of data. In other words, ER diagrams illustrate the logical structure of databases.
(smartdraw.com).
- introduced by Peter Chen in 1976.
- Yields a graphical representation of entities and their relationships in database structure
(elms.sti.edu)
- Is usually represented by an entity relationship diagram

II. Entity Relationship Diagram Symbols:

- Diagram consists of shapes or symbols use to distinguish or define the function of an entity.
- Here are five main components of ERD according to smartdraw.com:
1. Entities
a. is an object or concept about which you want to store information.
b. Usually represented by rectangle shapes
2. Actions
a. which are represented by diamond shapes, show how two entities share information in
the database.
3. Attributes
a. Is the unique, distinguishing characteristic of the entity.
b. It can have multiple values which means that this attribute is based on another attribute
c. Represented by circular shapes
4. Connecting lines
a. Connects the attributes to show the relationships of entities in the diagram
5. Cardinality
a. specifies how many instances of an entity relate to one instance of another entity.
b. Defines the numerical attributes of the relationship between two entities or entity sets.
c. Examples are:
i. One to One Model
ii. One to Many Model
iii. Many to Many Model
III. ER Diagram Purpose
1. It helps us understand the relationship of entities.
2. It helps us understand the system of our program.
3. It helps us analyze the data flow of our system.
4. Visualizes the flow of our data throughout the system.
Carlos Vicente E. Torralba December 2, 2017
Theory of Database Systems BSIT 221

IV. Synopsis
- ER Diagram or Entity Relationship Model helps us to understand the complexity of our
system by creating symbols, shapes and objects to analyze the flow of data throughout the
system.
- It is similar to our flowchart in programming but specifically, ER diagram is widely used for
database systems.
References:
o elms.sti.edu
o Lucidchart.com
o Smartdraw.com