Database Fundamental (TIS 1101)

Tutorial 3

Q1. How are many to many relationships (M:N) addressed in the development of an
E-R diagram? Give an example of a M:N relationship and explain how it is
addressed for an internal model.

Although M:N relationships may properly be viewed in a conceptual model, you

cannot directly implement them in an RDBMS and hence they have to be
modified for the internal model. Therefore, an M:N relationship must be
decomposed into two 1:M relationships, centered upon a composite entity.

For example: a video rental database can have the same tape being rented by
many customers, and the same customer renting many tapes.
M N
CUSTOMER rents TAPE

Conceptual Model

Note that the O is only next to customer because when the video rental company
buys a new tape, it hasn’t been yet rented by any customer but they already
must enter it into the database. However, they don’t enter a new person into
their database until that person actually becomes a customer by renting a tape.

This M:N relationship must be transformed into 2 1:M relationships with a

composite entity in the middle:

1 M M 1
CUSTOMER RENTAL TAPE

(1,N) (1,1) (1,1) (0,N)

Internal Model
 Note that the O now is on the side of RENTAL going to TAPE. The CUSTOMER
record only gets created when he rents a TAPE. So a CUSTOMER must have a
relationship with RENTAL. Whereas the TAPE record was created before anyone
rented it. So the association with RENTAL is optional.

Q2. What is the difference between a composite key, a composite attribute and a
composite entity?

A composite key is a key that consists of more than one attribute.

Example: (stu_LName, stu_FName, stu_Iinit, stu_Phone)  stu_Hrs

A composite attribute is an attribute which can be further subdivided to yield

additional attributes
Example: address  city, street, state, zip code

A composite entity, also known as the bridge entity, is used as a bridge to break
M:N relationships into two sets of 1:M relationships.
Q3. What is a derived attribute and how it is represented in the Chen’s model?

A derived attribute is an attribute whose value can be calculated from another

attribute. For example, age (current date (year) – date of birth (year)). This
attribute is not physically stored in the database.

In the Chen’s model, derived attribute is represented as a dashed to the entity.

Q4. Explain briefly the THREE data abstraction levels.

External model – represents the user’s view of the data environment

Conceptual model – represents the global view of the entire organization

data. It integrates all the external models into a single global view

Internal model – is the representation of the database as seen by the

DBMS.
Q5. Draw a Chen diagram and a Crowfoot diagram based on the following
diagram:

Crowfoot

** Note to tutor: If time permits, can expose student to insert table such as.
Create databse dbStudent

Connect to dbStudent

create table STUDENT

(
student_id int,
name varchar(30),
age int,
gender char(1)
);

Insert into student values (100, ‘Abu’, 20, ‘M’);

Insert into student values (101, ‘Ali’, 25, ‘M’);
Insert into student values (101, ‘Aminah’, 22, ‘F’);