Chapter 7

Data Modeling Using

the
Entity-Relationship
Model
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 Chapter Outline
• Overview of the Database Design Process
• Example Database Application (COMPANY)
• ER Model Concepts
– Entities and Attributes
– Entity Types, Value Sets, and Key Attributes
– Relationships and Relationship Types
– Weak Entity Types
– Roles and Attributes in Relationship Types
• ER Model Notations, Naming Conventions, Design Issues
• ER Diagram for COMPANY Schema
• Alternative Notations – UML class diagrams
• n-ary Relationships with degree n > 2

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 Overview of the Database Design
Process
• Two main activities (see Figure 7.1, next slide):
– Database schema design
– Application programs design
• Focus in this chapter on database schema design
– Given the database requirements, design the
conceptual schema for a database
• Application programs design focuses on the
programs and interfaces that access and update
the database (considered part of software
engineering discipline)

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Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley
 The Database Design Process
• Requirements Analysis and Specification is in the
realm of Systems Analysis and Design
– In this chapter, we assume it is already completed
– Briefly discussed in Chapter 10
• This and next chapter focus on Conceptual Design
(see Figure 7.1)
– Physical Design discussed in Chapter 20, after
presenting file structures and indexing (Chapters 17,
18)
– Logical Design presented in Chapter 9

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 The Entity-Relationship (ER) Model
• ER model is a conceptual data model for database design
– Has an associated notation (ER schema diagrams) for
drawing/displaying the database schema
– Many variations of ER model exists
– Also, many extensions (see EER model, Chapter 8)
• Next slide (Figure 7.2) shows a complete ER schema
diagram for a COMPANY database
– We will explain gradually how this design is created
– First we introduce the requirements for the COMPANY
database
– Then we present ER model concepts and diagrammatic
notation gradually, and design the schema step-by-step

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Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley
 Example: COMPANY Database
• Create a database schema design based on the
following (simplified) requirements for a
COMPANY Database:
– The company is organized into DEPARTMENTs.
Each department has a name, number and an
employee who manages the department. We keep
track of the start date of the department manager.
A department may have several locations.
– Each department controls a number of
PROJECTs. Each project has a unique name,
unique number and is located at a single location.

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 COMPANY Database (cont.)
– The database will store each EMPLOYEE’s name,
social security number (unique for each
employee), address, salary, sex, and birthdate.
• Each employee works for one department, but may
work on several projects.
• We keep track of the number of hours per week that
an employee currently works on each project.
• We also keep track of the direct supervisor of each
employee.
– An employee can have DEPENDENTs.
• For each dependent, the database keeps track of
their first name, sex, birthdate, and their relationship
to the employee (child, spouse, etc.).

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 ER Model Concepts
• Entities and Attributes
– Entities: Specific objects or things in the mini-world that are
represented in the database.
• Examples: the EMPLOYEE John Smith, the Research
DEPARTMENT, the ProductX PROJECT
– Attributes: Properties used to describe an entity.
• Examples: an EMPLOYEE entity may have the attributes
Name, SSN, Address, Sex, BirthDate
– Data values: A specific entity has a value for each of its
attributes.
• Example: An employee entity may have Name='John Smith',
SSN='123456789', Address ='731, Fondren, Houston, TX',
Sex='M', BirthDate='09-JAN-55‘
– Each attribute has a value set (or data type) associated
with it – e.g. integer, string, subrange, enumerated type, …

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 Types of Attributes
• Simple attribute (sometimes called atomic):
– Each entity has a single value for the attribute. For example,
the SSN or Sex of an employee.
– Not divisible
• Composite attribute (also called compound):
– The attribute may be composed of several components. For
example:
• Address(Apt#, House#, Street, City, State, ZipCode, Country), or
• Name(FirstName, MiddleName, LastName).
• Composition may form a hierarchy where some components
are themselves composite (Figure 7.4, next slide).
• Multi-valued attribute (also called repeating group or
collection):
– An single entity may have multiple values for that attribute. For
example, Color of a CAR or PreviousDegrees of a STUDENT.
• Denoted as {Color} or {PreviousDegrees}.

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 Types of Attributes (cont.)
• Composite and multi-valued attributes may be nested (to
any number of levels).
– Example: PreviousDegrees of a STUDENT can be a
composite multi-valued attribute denoted by
{PreviousDegrees (College, Year, Degree, Field)}
– Multiple PreviousDegrees values can exist for a
particular student
– Each has four subcomponent attributes:
• College, Year, Degree, Field
• Stored vs Derived attribute
• Age & Birth_date

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 Entity Types and Key Attributes
• Entities with the same basic attributes are
grouped (or typed) into an entity type.
– Examples: EMPLOYEE or PROJECT.
• Key attribute: an attribute of an entity type
for which each entity must have a unique
(distinct) value.
– Example: SSN of EMPLOYEE, or
PNUMBER of PROJECT, or PNAME of
PROJECT.
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Entity Types and Key Attributes (cont.)
• A key attribute may be composite.
– Example: VehicleTagNumber (also known as
LicensePlateNo) of a CAR is a key with two
components (LicNumber, State).
• An entity type may have more than one key.
– The CAR entity type may have two keys:
• VehicleIdentificationNumber (popularly called VIN,
unique number stamped on each new car)
• VehicleTagNumber (Number, State)
• Each key is underlined in ER diagrams (see next
slides)

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 Displaying an Entity type
• In ER diagrams, the entity type name is
displayed in a rectangular box
• Attributes are displayed in ovals
– Each attribute is connected to its entity type
– Components of a composite attribute are
connected to the oval representing the
composite attribute
– Each key attribute is underlined
– Multivalued attributes displayed in double ovals
• See CAR example (Figure 7.7(a)) on next slide

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Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley
 Entity Set
• Each entity type will have a collection of individual
entities stored in the database
– Called the entity set
– Previous slide (Figure 7.7(b) show three CAR entities
in the entity set for CAR
– Same name (CAR) refers to both entity type and entity
set
– Object models (see Chapter 11) give different names to
the entity type and the entity set
– Entity set changes over time as entities are created
and deleted – represents current state of database

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 Initial Design of Entity Types for
the COMPANY Database Schema
• Based on the requirements, we can identify four initial
entity types in the COMPANY database:
– DEPARTMENT
– PROJECT
– EMPLOYEE
– DEPENDENT
• Initial design (Figure 7.8) on following slide, will be
refined into final design
• Initial attributes shown are derived from the
requirements description

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Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley
 Refining the initial design by introducing
Relationships

• The initial design is typically not complete

• Some aspects in the requirements will be
represented as relationships
• ER model has three main concepts:
– Entities (and their entity types and entity sets)
– Attributes (simple, composite, multivalued)
– Relationships (and their relationship types and
relationship sets)
• We introduce relationship concepts next

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 Relationships and Relationship Types
• A relationship relates two or more distinct entities, with a
specific meaning.
– For example, EMPLOYEE John Smith works on the ProductX
PROJECT, or EMPLOYEE Franklin Wong manages the
Research DEPARTMENT.
• Relationships of the same type are grouped or typed into
a relationship type.
– For example, the WORKS_ON relationship type in which
EMPLOYEEs and PROJECTs participate, or the MANAGES
relationship type in which EMPLOYEEs and DEPARTMENTs
participate.
• The degree of a relationship type is the number of
participating entity types.
– Both MANAGES and WORKS_ON are binary relationships.

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 Relationship Type vs. Relationship Set

• Relationship Type:
– Is the schema description of a relationship
– Identifies the relationship name and the
participating entity types
– Also identifies certain relationship constraints
• Relationship Set:
– The current set of relationship instances
represented in the database
– The current state of a relationship type

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 Relationship Set
• A set of associations (or relationship instances)
between individual entities from the participating
entity sets:
– Example: Figure 7.9 (next slide) shows a
relationship set for WORKS_FOR
– {r1, r2, r3, r4, r5, r6, r7, ...}
– Relationship instance r1=(e1, d1) means
EMPLOYEE e1 WORKS_FOR DEPARTMENT d1
– Associates e1 with d1

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Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley
 Relationship Type
• Previous figure displayed the relationship set
• Each instance in the set relates individual
participating entities – one from each participating
entity type
• In ER diagrams, we represent the relationship type as
follows:
– Diamond-shaped box is used to display a relationship
type
– Connected to the participating entity types via straight
lines
– Degree of a relationship type is the number of
participating entity types

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Refining the COMPANY Initial Design by
Including Relationships
• By examining the requirements, attributes in the initial
design that refer to other entities are converted into
relationships (and removed from the entity types)
• Some of these relationship attributes (Figure 7.8,
repeated on next slide) are:
– The Department attribute of EMPLOYEE refers to the
DEPARTMENT entity that the employee WORKS_FOR
– The Manager attribute of DEPARTMENT refers to the
EMPLOYEE entity who MANAGES the DEPARTMENT
– The Supervisor attribute of EMPLOYEE refers to another
EMPLOYEE entity (this is called a recursive relationship)
– Several other similar attributes are converted into
relationships – can you identify those in next slide?

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Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley
Refining the COMPANY Initial Design by
Including Relationships (cont.)
• Six relationship types are identified for the COMPANY
database schema (see Figure 7.2, repeated next slide)
• All are binary relationships (degree 2)
• Listed below with their participating entity types:
– WORKS_FOR (between EMPLOYEE, DEPARTMENT)
– MANAGES (also between EMPLOYEE, DEPARTMENT)
– CONTROLS (between DEPARTMENT, PROJECT)
– WORKS_ON (between EMPLOYEE, PROJECT)
– SUPERVISION (between EMPLOYEE (as subordinate),
EMPLOYEE (as supervisor))
– DEPENDENTS_OF (between EMPLOYEE, DEPENDENT)

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Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley
 Discussion on Relationship
Types
• In the refined design, some attributes from the initial entity
types are refined into relationships:
– Manager of DEPARTMENT -> MANAGES
– Works_on of EMPLOYEE -> WORKS_ON
– Department of EMPLOYEE -> WORKS_FOR
– etc
• In general, more than one relationship type can exist
between the same participating entity types
– MANAGES and WORKS_FOR are distinct relationship
types between EMPLOYEE and DEPARTMENT
– Different meanings and different relationship instances.

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 Recursive Relationship Type
• A relationship type with the same entity type participating
twice in two distinct roles
• Example: the SUPERVISION relationship
• EMPLOYEE participates twice in two distinct roles:
– supervisor (or boss) role
– supervisee (or subordinate) role
– must distinguish the roles in a relationship instance
• Each relationship instance ri relates two distinct
EMPLOYEE entities (see Figure 7.11, next slide):
– One employee in supervisor role (labeled 1 in Fig. 7.11)
– One employee in supervisee role (labeled 2 in Fig. 7.11)

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 Weak Entity Types
• An entity type that does not have a key attribute on its own
• A weak entity must participate in an identifying relationship type with
an owner (or identifying) entity type
• Individual entities are identified by the combination of:
– A partial key of the weak entity type
– The particular entity they are related to in the identifying entity
type
• Example (see Figure 7.2):
– A DEPENDENT entity is identified by the dependent’s first name,
and the specific EMPLOYEE with whom the dependent is related
– Name of DEPENDENT is the partial key
– DEPENDENT is a weak entity type
– EMPLOYEE is its identifying (owner) entity type via the identifying
relationship type DEPENDENT_OF

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 Constraints on Relationships
• Constraints on Relationship Types
– Two main types of constraints on binary relationships
– Cardinality Ratio (specifies maximum participation)
• One-to-one (1:1)
• One-to-many (1:N) or Many-to-one (N:1)
• Many-to-many (M:N)
– Existence Dependency Constraint (specifies minimum
participation) (also called participation constraint)
• zero (optional participation, not existence-dependent)
• one or more (mandatory participation, existence-dependent)

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Constraints on Relationships (cont.)
• Cardinality ratio specified by labeling 1, M, or N to
relationship lines in ER diagrams.
• See Figure 7.2, repeated in next slide
• Total participation specified by double line, partial
participation by single line.
• These constraints are derived from the real-world
meaning and characteristics of each relationship type
• In some ER diagrammatic notation, it is common to
specify cardinality ration and participation constraint jointly
using (min, max) notation
– Called (min, max) constraints or multiplicities

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 Displaying a Recursive
Relationship Type in ER Diagrams
• In a recursive relationship type.
– Both participations are same entity type in
different roles.
– For example, SUPERVISION relationships
between EMPLOYEE (in role of supervisor or
boss) and (another) EMPLOYEE (in role of
subordinate or worker).
• In ER diagram, need to display role names to
distinguish participations (see Figure 7.2).
• Role names can also be optionally displayed for
other relationship types

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 Attributes of Relationship Types

• A relationship type can have attributes:

– For example, HoursPerWeek of WORKS_ON
– Its value for each relationship instance
describes the number of hours per week that
an EMPLOYEE works on a PROJECT.
• A value of HoursPerWeek depends on a particular
(employee, project) combination
– Most relationship attributes are used with M:N
relationships
• In 1:N relationships, they can be transferred to the
entity type on the N-side of the relationship

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 Alternative (min, max) notation
• Alternative way to specify relationship constraints; pecified on each
participation of an entity type E in a relationship type R
• Specifies that each entity e in E participates in at least min and at
most max relationship instances in R
• Default (no constraint): min=0, max=n (signifying no limits)
• Must have min≤max, min≥0, max ≥1
• Derived from the knowledge of mini-world constraints
• Examples:
– A department has exactly one manager and an employee can
manage at most one department.
• Specify (0,1) for participation of EMPLOYEE in MANAGES
• Specify (1,1) for participation of DEPARTMENT in MANAGES
– An employee can work for exactly one department but a
department can have any number of employees.
• Specify (1,1) for participation of EMPLOYEE in WORKS_FOR
• Specify (0,n) for participation of DEPARTMENT in WORKS_FOR

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Alternative (min, max) notation (cont.)
• Figure 7.15 (next slide) shows the complete COMPANY
ER schema diagram with the (min, max) notation

• Also shows all the (optional) role names

• Important: In some popular diagrammatic notations, the

placement of (min, max) are reversed (placed on the other
side of the binary relationship) – for example, in UML
class diagrams (see later in this chapter)

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 Summary of ER Diagrams

• Next two slides (Figure 7.14) summarizes

the ER Diagrammatic notations described
so far

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 Continued next page…

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Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley
 Alternative diagrammatic notation
• ER diagrams (as described here) is one popular
method for displaying database schemas
• Many other diagrammatic notations exist in the
literature and in various database design and
modeling tools
• Appendix A illustrates some of the alternative
notations that have been used
• UML class diagrams is representative of an
alternative way of displaying ER concepts that is
used in several automated design tools

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 UML Class Diagrams
• UML (Universal Modeling Language) is a popular
language/methodology for object-oriented software design
• Part of software design is specifying classes using class
diagrams – this is somewhat similar to ER design
• Classes (similar to entity types) as displayed as large
rounded boxes with three sections:
– Top section includes entity type (class) name
– Second section includes attributes
– Third section includes class operations (operations are not
in basic ER model)
• Relationships (called associations) represented as lines
connecting the classes
– Other UML terminology also differs from ER terminology
• UML has many other types of diagrams for software
design (see Chapter 10)

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 UML Class Diagrams (cont.)
• Next slide (Figure 7.16) shows example of UML class
diagrams for the COMPANY database schema
• Multiplicities (similar to (min, max) constraints) placed on
opposite end when compared to our previous notation:
– Displayed as min..max
– * represents no maximum limit on participation (like N)
• Two kinds of relationships
– Association: Relationship between two independent
objects; displayed as lines
– Aggregation: Relationship between object and its parts;
displayed as lines with small diamond at object end
• Weak entity can be represented using concept of
qualified association/aggregation (discriminator
similar to partial key)
• Relationship names are optional; relationship instances
called links; relationship attributes called link attributes
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 Relationships of Higher Degree
• Recall that degree of a relationship type is the
number of participating entities in each instance
• Relationship types of degree 2 are called binary,
degree 3 are ternary, and degree n are n-ary
• Example: A relationship instance in SUPPLY (Figure 7.10
, next slide) relates three entities (s, p, j) where s is a
SUPPLIER, p a PART, j a PROJECT such that s currently
supplies part p to project j (with Quantity items per month)
• In general, an n-ary relationship (where n > 2) is not
equivalent to n binary relationships
• Constraints are harder to specify for higher-degree
relationships (n > 2) than for binary relationships

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Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley
 Discussion of n-ary relationships
• In general, 3 binary relationships can represent different
information than a single ternary relationship (see Figure
7.17a and b on next slide)
• If needed, the binary and n-ary relationships can all be
included in the schema design
• In some cases, a ternary relationship can be represented
as a weak entity type if the data model allows multiple
identifying relationships (and hence multiple owner entity
types) (see Figure 7.17c)

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Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley
 Discussion of n-ary relationships (cont.)

• If a particular binary relationship can be derived

from a higher-degree relationship at all times,
then it is redundant
• For example, TAUGHT_DURING binary
relationship in Figure 7.18 (see next slide) can be
derived from the ternary relationship OFFERS
(based on the meaning of the relationships)
• It all depends on the meaning of the relationships
in the real world

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Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley
 Displaying constraints on higher-degree
relationships
• The (min, max) constraints can be displayed on the edges
– however, they do not fully describe the constraints
• Displaying a 1, M, or N indicates additional constraints
– An M or N indicates no constraint
– A 1 indicates that an entity can participate in at most one
relationship instance that has a particular combination of the
other participating entities
• In general, both (min, max) and 1, M, or N are needed to
describe fully the constraints

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 Extended Entity-Relationship
(EER) Model (in next chapter)

• The basic ER model described so far does not

support specialization and generalization
abstractions
• Next chapter illustrates how the ER model can be
extended with
– Type-subtype and set-subset relationships
– Specialization/Generalization Hierarchies
– Notation to display them in EER diagrams

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 Chapter 7 Summary
• ER Model Concepts: Entities, attributes,
relationships
• Constraints in the ER model
• Using ER in step-by-step conceptual schema
design for the COMPANY database
• ER Diagrams - Notation
• Alternative Notations – UML class diagrams,
others

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 Additional Examples
• Next few slides are additional figures from the
chapter, and figures from the Chapter 7 exercises

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