The E-R Model

Prof. Sin-Min Lee

Department of Computer Science
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E-R Model
The E-R model is not intended to be associated with any particular database model. E-R diagrams are intended to allow humans the ability to capture more of the applications meaning.

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History of E-R Model

E-R Model was proposed by Dr. Peter Chen (currently professor at Louisiana State University) Chens original paper on ER Model is the 35th most sited paper in computer science Chen has written papers interconnecting E-R model and linguistics
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The Entity-Relationship Model (History)

Developed by Peter Chen in the 1970s Several variations have evolved All are designed towards the concise capture of the application semantics in terms appropriate for subsequent mapping to a specific database model. It is currently the most widely used.

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The Entity-Relationship Approach

Entity: an object that exists and is distinguishable from other objects. i.e. person, place, thing, event or concept about which information(attributes) is recorded. The basic unit of the E-R model. The structure of an entity is called its schema.

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More Terminology
Object: things in the real world that can be observed and classified because they have related properties Entity: the groupings we use when we categorize the objects. Sometimes called a class.

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Three Basic Graphical Symbols in an ER Diagram

Rectangles are used to model conceptual data units or data objects. Circles are used to model attributes. Course Attributes are the characteristics, components or properties of entities. CID Diamonds are used to model the structural associations that exist between entities.
Enroll

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BASIC CONCEPTS
There are 3 basic notions in the E-R Model: Entity Sets Relationship Sets Attributes

AN ENTITY
An entity is a thing or object in the real world that is distinguishable from all other objects. It has an unique set of properties that may uniquely identify an entity. For example, a student entity has three attributes: name , student-id, and social-security numbers.
John 1222 123-12-2244
STUDENT entity

ENTITY SETS
An entity set is a set of entities that share the same properties or attributes. Entity sets do not need to be disjoint. For example, a customer can also be an employee.
John Kathy Steve 1222 2223 3222 123-12-2244 223-22-2245 723-12-2244 John Kathy Steve Manager Teller Teller

Customer (Entity Set)

Employee (Entity Set)

ATTRIBUTE
An entity is represented by a set of attributes. Attributes are descriptive properties possessed by each member of an entity set. Example:
STUDENT entity STUDENT

Attributes

name

student-id

address

ss#

ATTRIBUTE TYPES
There are several different types of attributes. Simple and Composite Single-valued and Multivalued Derived Null

ATTRIBUTE TYPES
Simple attributes are not divided into subparts. Composite attributes can be divided into subparts. Using composite attributes in a design schema is a good choice if a user will wish to refer to an entire attribute on some occasions.

ATTRIBUTE TYPES
Example: address (Composite attribute)

Composite attribute

street

city

state

zip

street-number

street-name

apartment-number

ATTRIBUTE TYPES
Single-valued attributes are attributes that only have a single
value for a particular entity. Multi-valued attributes refers to entities that are not singledvalue and Null valued. For example, consider an employee entity set with the attribute phone-number. An employee may have zero, one, or several phone numbers, different employee may have different numbers of phones.

ATTRIBUTE TYPES
Null attribute is used when an entity does not have a value
for an attribute. Derived attributes refer to an attribute that can be derived from other related attributes or entities. For instance, suppose that Age and Date-of-birth are attributes of the CUSTOMER entity set. We can calculate Age from Date-of-birth. In this case, Age is a derived attribute.

RELATIONSHIP SETS
A relationship is an association among several entities. A relationship set is a set of relationships of the same type. Consider the two entity sets customer and loan. We define the relationship set borrower to denote the association between customers and bank loans that the customers have.
321-12-3123 019-28-3746 555-55-5555 321-12-3123 321-12-3123 Jones Smith Main North Harrison Rye Woodside Rye Pittsfield L-17 L-23 L-14 L-19 L-16 1000 2000 1500 500 1300

Jackson Dupont Curry Adam North Spring

customer

loan

RECURSIVE RELATIONSHIP
Recursive relationship- the same entity set participates in a relationship set more than once, in different roles. The function that an entity plays in a relationship is called that entitys role. For example, consider an entity set employee that records information about all employees of the bank. We may have a relationship set works-for that is modeled by ordered pairs of employee entities. The first employee of a pair takes the role of worker, whereas the second takes the role of manager.
employee-name telephone-number employee-id

manager employee worker works-for

Recursive Relationship

BINARY RELATIONSHIP SETS Binary relationship set - relationship that involves two identity sets. Most of the relationship sets in a database system are binary. Occasionally, however, relationship set involve more than two entity.
OWNER Owns PROPERTY-FOR-RENT

Binary relationship called Owns

TERNARY RELATIONSHIP SET Ternary relationship set - relationship that involves three identity sets
DEGREE earned PERSON PERSON earned DEGREE on DATE DATE

Ternary Relationship Set

DEGREE OF A
RELATIONSHIP SET Degree of a relationship set is the number of entity sets that participate in a relationship set. For example, a binary relationship set is of degree 2; a ternary relationship set is of degree 3.

CONSTRAINTS
An E-R enterprise scheme may define certain constraints to which the contents of a database must conform. The two of most important types of constraints are Mapping Cardinalities and Participation Constraints. Participation Constraints The participation of an entity set E in a relationship set R is said to be total, if every entity in E participates in at least one relationship in R. If only some entities in E participate in relationship R, the participation of entity set E in relationship R is said to be partial.

CONSTRAINTS
Mapping Cardinalities or Cardinality ratios

Express the number of entities to which another entity can be associated via a relationship set Are most useful in describing binary relationship sets. For a binary relationship set R between entity sets A and B, the mapping cardinality must be one of the following: One to one One to many Many to one Many to many

MAPPING CARDINALITIES One to one An entity in A is associated with at most one entity in B, and an entity in B is associated with at most one entity in A.
A1 A2 A3 B1 B2 B3

MAPPING CARDINALITIES One to many

An entity in A is associated with any number (zero or more) of entities in B. An entity in B, however, can be associated with at most one entity in A.
A1 A2 A3 B1 B2 B3 B4

MAPPING CARDINALITIES Many to one

An entity in A is associated with at most one entity in B. An entity in B, however, can be associated with any number (zero or more) of entities in A.
A1 A1 A2 A3 B1 B2 B3

MAPPING CARDINALITIES Many to many

An entity in A is associated with any number (zero or more) of entities in B, and an entity in B is associated with any number (zero or more) of entities in A.
A1 A1 A2 A3 B1 B2 B3

KEYS
A key allows us to identify a set of attributes that suffice to distinguish entities from each other. Keys also help uniquely identify relationships, and thus distinguish relationships from each other. There are three types of keys: Super key Candidate key Primary key

KEY
Superkey is a set of one or more attributes that, taken collectively, us to identify uniquely an entity in the entity set. For example, customer-id is a superkey. Candidate key is a minimal superkey. For example, customer-name and customer-street is sufficient to distinguish among members of the customer entity set. Then {customer-name, customer-street} is a candidate key . Primary key denotes a candidate key that is chosen by the database designer as the principal means of identifying entities within an entity set. the primary key should be chosen such that its attributes are never, or very rarely, changed. For example, Social-security numbers are guaranteed to never changed.

RELATIONSHIP SETS
Primary key of an entity set allows us to distinguish among entities of the set. Similar mechanism is needed in order to distinguish among the various relationships of a relationship set. The structure of the primary key for the relationship set depends on the mapping cardinality of the relationship set.

RELATIONSHIP SETS
For example, suppose that there is a relationship set Depositor, with attribute access-date, between Customer relation and Account relation. Suppose that the relationship set is many to many. Then the primary key of Depositor consists of the union of the primary keys of Customer and Account. If a customer can have only one account- that is, if the Depositor relation is many to one from Customer to Accountthen the primary key of the Depositor relationship is simply the primary key of customer.

RELATIONSHIP SETS
Customer (ss# , name) Account (account-num) Depositor (ss#, account-num, access-date) John Kathy Steve 123-12-2244 223-22-2245 723-12-2244 Customer
10 May 2002 24 May 2002 3 June 2002 20 June 2002 21 June 2002

A-101 A-215 A-102 Account

Depositor

DESIGN ISSUE
Use of Entity Sets versus Attributes

Consider the entity set employee with attributes employeename and telephone-number. Treating a telephone as an attribute telephone-number implies that employees have precisely one telephone number each. Treating a telephone as an entity telephone permits employees to have several telephone number ( including zero) associated with them. However, we could instead easily define telephone-number as a multivalued attribute to allow multiple telephones per employee.

USE OF ENTITY SETS VERSUS ATTRIBUTES Treating a telephone as an attribute

John Kathy Steve 408-345-5366 408-222-3455 714-555-6366

EMPLOYEE (employee-name, telephone-number)

Treating a telephone as an entity

John Kathy Steve Alex
EMPLOYEE (employee-name)

408-888-3565 408-345-5366 408-222-3455 714-555-6366

cell-phone video-phone cell-phone cell-phone

TELEPHONE(telephone-number, type)

ENTITY-RELATIONSHIP DIAGRAM
Ellipses, which represent attributes Diamonds, which represent relationship sets Line, which link attributes to entity sets and entity sets to relationships sets Double ellipses, which represent multivalued attributes Double lines, which indicate total participation of an entity in a relationship set Double rectangles, which represent weak entity sets

Example of the 3 elements in E/R Diagram

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Classification of Constraints
1. 2. 3. 4. Keys Single-value constraints Multi-valued constraints Mapping Cardinalities and Participation Constraints

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Key in the E/R Model

Superkey is a set of one or more attributes that, taken collectively, for us to identify uniquely an item in the entity set. For example, customer-id is a superkey. Candidate key is a minimal superkey. For example, customer-name and customer-street is sufficient to distinguish among members of the customer entity set. Then {customer-name, customer-street } is a candidate key. Primary key denotes a candidate key that is chosen by the database designer as the principal means of identifying items within an entity set. the primary key should be chosen such that its attributes are never, or very rarely, changed. For example, Social-security numbers are guaranteed to never changed.

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Single/Multi-valued attributes
Single-valued attributes are attributes that only have a single value for a particular entity. Multi-valued attributes refers to items that are not singled-value and Null valued. For example, consider an employee entity set with the attribute phone-number. An employee may have zero, one, or several phone numbers; different employee may have different numbers of phones.

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Mapping Cardinalities or Cardinality ratios

Express the number of items to which another item can be associated via a relationship set Are most useful in describing binary relationship sets. For a binary relationship set R between entity sets A and B, the mapping cardinality must be one of the following:
   

One to One One to Many Many to One Many to Many

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Participation Constraints
The participation of an entity set E in a relationship set R is said to be total, if every item in E participates in at least one relationship in R. If only some items in E participate in relationship R, the participation of entity set E in relationship R is said to be partial.

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Weak Entity Sets

There is an occasional condition in which an entity sets key is composed of attributes some or all of which belong to another entity set. Such an entity set is called a weak entity set.

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Discriminator
The discriminator of a weak entity set is a set of attributes that allows this distinction to be made. For example, the discriminator of a weak entity set payment is the attribute payment-number, since, for each loan a payment number uniquely identifies one single payment for that loan. The discriminator of a weak entity set is also called the partial key of the entity set.

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Requirements for Weak Entity Sets

We cannot obtain key attributes for a weak entity set indiscriminately. Rather, if E is a weak entity set then its key consists of:
 Zero or

more of its own attributes, and  Key attributes from entity sets that are reached by certain many-one relationship from E to other entity sets. These many-one relationship are called supporting relationships for E.

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Discriminator (cont.)
Note: although each payment entity is distinct, payments for different loans may share the same payment-number. Thus, payment entity set does not have a primary key; it is a weak entity set. The primary key of a weak entity set is formed by the primary key of the identifying entity set, plus the weak entity sets discriminator.

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Identifying a Weak Entity Type

A Weak entity type doesnt have a primary key. If X is a weak entity type and Y is the entity type on which X is dependent. We form a primary key for X by combining the primary key of Y which one or more attributes, called discriminator or partial key, from X. In an E/R Diagram, a partial key is usually dashunderlined. e.g., primary key for DEPENDENT: {Employee No., DName}.

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* Doted-line = double-line
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Detailed Conceptual Design

Employee
Emp No Emp Name First Name Mid Initials Last Name NID Address Salary Gender DOB unique identifier of an emp. Identifier name of an employee Composite first name of an employee middle initials of an employee last name of an employee national id of an employee Unique address of an employee salary of an employee sex of an employee birth date of an employee

Detailed Conceptual Design

First Name Mid Initials Last Name

Emp No Emp Name

Employee

NID Address Salary

DOB

Gender

Emp No NID Address Emp Name

First Name Mid Initials Last Name Dept Name Phone Dept No Location

supervise works
Start d

Employee
Salary Gender DOB Hours

Department
Employees

manage control

has works on Dependent

Relation Depd Name Gender DOB

Proj No

Project
Location Proj Name

Conceptual Design with Weak Entities

supervise works Employee manage has works on Dependent Project control Department