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Understanding Entity Sets and Attributes

The document discusses entity sets and their attributes. An entity set is a set of entities of the same type that share properties. Entities have attributes that describe them, such as names and addresses for people. An entity set represents entities using a set of attributes. Attributes can be simple, composite, single-valued or multi-valued. Relationships also exist between entity sets, such as a borrower relationship between customers and loans. Relationship sets define the cardinality of relationships between entity sets. Keys uniquely identify entities and relationship sets use the combination of participating entity set primary keys as a super key.

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Anant Jain
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195 views10 pages

Understanding Entity Sets and Attributes

The document discusses entity sets and their attributes. An entity set is a set of entities of the same type that share properties. Entities have attributes that describe them, such as names and addresses for people. An entity set represents entities using a set of attributes. Attributes can be simple, composite, single-valued or multi-valued. Relationships also exist between entity sets, such as a borrower relationship between customers and loans. Relationship sets define the cardinality of relationships between entity sets. Keys uniquely identify entities and relationship sets use the combination of participating entity set primary keys as a super key.

Uploaded by

Anant Jain
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Entity Sets

A database can be modeled as:

a collection of entities, relationship among entities.


An entity is an object that exists and is distinguishable from other

objects.

Example: specific person, company, event, plant


Entities have attributes

Example: people have names and addresses


An entity set is a set of entities of the same type that share the

same properties.
Example: set of all persons, companies, trees, holidays

2.1

Entity Sets customer and loan


customer-id customer- customer- customername street city loan- amount number

2.2

Attributes
An entity is represented by a set of attributes, that is descriptive

properties possessed by all members of an entity set. Example: customer = (customer-id, customer-name, customer-street, customer-city) loan = (loan-number, amount)
Domain the set of permitted values for each attribute
Attribute types:

Simple and composite attributes. Single-valued and multi-valued attributes E.g. multivalued attribute: phone-numbers Derived attributes Can be computed from other attributes E.g. age, given date of birth

2.3

Composite Attributes

2.4

Relationship Set borrower

2.5

Mapping Cardinalities
Express the number of entities to which another entity can be

associated via a relationship set.


Most useful in describing binary relationship sets. For a binary relationship set the mapping cardinality must be

one of the following types:


One to one
One to many Many to one Many to many

2.6

Mapping Cardinalities

One to one

One to many

Note: Some elements in A and B may not be mapped to any elements in the other set
2.7

Mapping Cardinalities

Many to one

Many to many

Note: Some elements in A and B may not be mapped to any elements in the other set
2.8

Keys
A super key of an entity set is a set of one or more attributes

whose values uniquely determine each entity.


A candidate key of an entity set is a minimal super key

Customer-id is candidate key of customer


account-number is candidate key of account
Although several candidate keys may exist, one of the

candidate keys is selected to be the primary key.


So one key is selected as primary key and others are called

alternate keys

2.9

Keys for Relationship Sets


The combination of primary keys of the participating entity sets

forms a super key of a relationship set.


(customer-id, account-number) is the super key of depositor
NOTE: this means a pair of entity sets can have at most one relationship in a particular relationship set.
E.g. if we wish to track all access-dates to each account by each

customer, we cannot assume a relationship for each access. We can use a multivalued attribute though
Must consider the mapping cardinality of the relationship set

when deciding the what are the candidate keys


Need to consider semantics of relationship set in selecting the

primary key in case of more than one candidate key

2.10

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