Lesson-5 The Entity Relationship model Hi, we are going to discuss about some thing very important in a DBMS.

You all know what is an entity? Well; an entity is a thing which could be distinguished from others. The Entity/Relationship (E/R) model was developed to give an overall, conceptual view of the organization of data. In these notes, we present the modeling concepts. The E/R model has an associated graphical representation, called E/R diagrams which will be discussed later. Analogies A Miniworld is a small part of the real world that we are interested in Modeling. Movie World Example: For a running example we will assume that our Miniworld is the motion picture industry. Student World Example: For another running example we will assume that your Miniworld is the students and subjects at JCU. Entity An entity is a thing or an object in that world, usually one that physically exists, that is distinguishable from other entities. Attribute An attribute is a property of an entity. Movie World Example: Let us assume that we have several "Star" and "Movie" entities. entity a1 has attributes Name = Merly Streep, Age = 50, HairColour = {blond, red, brunette} entity a2 has attributes Name = Robert Redford, Age = 60, HairColour = blond entity a3 has attributes Name = Yul Brenner, Age = 60, HairColour = bald entity m1 has attributes Name = Sneakers, Cost = $10M, Earning = $40M, Profit = $30M, When-Released = 1995

Where a1 and m1 indicates stars and movies respectively. Student World Example: Let's assume that we have several "Student" and Subject" entities. entity s1 has attributes Name = Charles Walker, Id = 484350 entity s2 has attributes Name = Jasper, Id = 2234433 entity u1 has attributes Code = CP1500, Name = Information Systems entity u2 has attributes Code = CP1200, Name = Programming Now we will consider the following observations from the above. Even among these simple entities we notice that there are several different kinds of attributes. One distinction is simple vs. composite. A simple attribute has an atomic value, while a composite attribute is (naturally) composed of other attributes. MovieWorld Example: We could view a "Star's" Name attribute as a composite attribute, since it is the composition of GivenNames and Surname attributes. StudentWorld Example: We could view a "Student's" Name attribute as a composite attribute, since it is the composition of GivenNames and Surname attributes. Single Valued vs. Multi Valued Another distinction we can make is single-valued vs. multivalued A single-valued attribute can only be a single value, while a multivalued attribute can be a list or set of values. MovieWorld Example: The HairColour attribute is multivalued since Meryl Streep's hair colour is three different colours. We will assume that it is three different colours all at the same time! StudentWorld Example: A Location attribute could be added to each Subject indicating in which rooms lectures are held. It is often the case that a subject is taught in different rooms. So Location is a multivalued attribute

In general, the fact that a single-valued attribute changes value over time (e.g., when a person dyes their hair) does not mean that it is multivalued. A third distinction is stored vs. derived. While the vast majority of attributes will be stored, some attributes can be computed or derived from other attributes. MovieWorld Example: A movie's Profit is a derived attribute, computable from the Cost and Earnings attributes. StudentWorld Example: Assume that each subject has a When multivalued attribute that indicates when the lectures are held. Then a possible derived attribute would be Lecture hours, which is total number of hours that the class meets each week. Lecture hours is derived from the When attribute. So, you now seems to be got the basic idea of entities and attributes. E-R Diagrams In an E/R diagram we will represent an attribute using an oval enscribed with the name of the attribute, as follows.

At least that is how we will represent a simple, single-valued, stored attribute. A composite attribute will be represented by a hierarchy of ovals, where each oval represents an attribute value within the composite. A multivalued attribute will be represented as an oval within an oval.

Finally, a derived attribute will be represented as an attribute with dashed or dotted lines.

An aside on null values: One interesting question is what happens when we don't know the value of a particular attribute? When an attribute value is unknown we will use a null value. For the above entites, we have complete information, but in real world databases

null values will often be present. We will represent a null value with the special symbol @. For some entites an attribute is inapplicable, which means that the entity does not have a value for that attribute. For instance, the HairColour attribute for Yul Brenner is really inapplicable since he does not have any hair. We will use a @ to represent inapplicable values as well. We have thus overloaded the semantics of @ with two completely disparate meanings. The overloaded semantics however is common in databases since it is in SQL. Symbols used in an E-R Diagrams

Entity type Hi guys now you know what is an entity, now we will look into what exactly is an entity type, quite interesting. Isnt it? An entity type is a description of the attributes that a set of possible entities has in common. name ssn gpa

Students MovieWorld Example: In our running example, we so far have two entity types: Star and Movie. We will use a third, Studio as well. We will assume that Star has attributes Name, Age, and HairColour. Movie has attributes Name, WhenReleased, Cost, Earnings, and Profit. Finally, Studio has attributes Name and Location. Name is certainly a popular attribute name for these entity types! StudentWorld Example: In our running example, we so far have two entity types: Student and Subject. We will use a third, Lecturer as well. We will assume that Student has attributes Name, Addres, and Id. Subject has attributes Code, Name, and When. Finally, Lecturer has attributes Name and Age. Name is certainly a popular attribute name for these entity types! An entity type is sometimes called an entity set, however, some authors distinguish between the two. More specifically an entity set is a set of actual entities (that is, it is an

extension of an entity type, rather than an entity type itself). We will use the two terms interchangeably. In an E/R diagram an entity type is represented with a rectangular box enscribed with the name of that entity type. Key attributes Oh! I will discuss with you about the Key Attributes which will give impetus to our discussions. Key attributes (or just keys) are a set of attributes which have distinct values for any possible entity. There may be several keys for a particular entity type. MovieWorld Example: By convention, two movies with the same name cannot be released during the same year. So the attributes Name and WhenReleased form a perfectly reasonable key for the Movie entity type. StudentWorld Example: Each student has a unique Id, so that attribute makes a perfectly reasonable key for the Student entity type. In an E/R diagram we depict a key attribute (or an attribute that is part of a key) by underlining the attribute name, as follows. Let's look at an example. MovieWorld Example: By convention, two movies with the same name cannot be released during the same year. So the attributes Name and when Released form a perfectly reasonable key for the Movie entity type. Relationship We both have a good relation now, we could call it as a student and faculty relation ship, likewise in E-R model. A relationship is an association between two or more entites. MovieWorld Example: The star Robert Redford "stars in" the movie Sneakers. StudentWorld Example: The student Charles Walker "takes" the subject

Relationship type A relationship type or relationship set is a set of "similar in kind" relationships among one or more entites. Mathematically, a relationship type, R, among entity types E1, E2, ... En is R E1 E2 ... En . In other words a relationship set can be thought of as a subset of the Cartesian product of the participating entity types. The Cartesian product is just the space of all possible associations among the entity types. A relationship type is often also called a role because it describes a role that one entity plays with another.

nam ss Student gp

grad cn Enrolled

title credi Course

MovieWorld Example: Each star may "star in" one or more movies. So we could have a relationship type StarsIn that captures has all the associations between stars and the movies in which they star. StudentWorld Example: The relationship type EnrolledIn is the set of associations between Student and the Subject in which they are enrolled. Cardinality Ratio We will often be interested in the cardinality ratio of a relationship type, that is, how many of each entity type participate in the relationship. Possible cardinality ratios are the following. One-to-one (1-to-1): Each entity in E1 is associated with 0 or one entity in E2, and vice versa.

MovieWorld Example: Assume that Married is a relationship type between Star and Star, which captures whom is married to whom. It is a 1-1 relationship since each Star is married to at most one other Star (let's not worry too much about people who currently have multiple wives or husbands!). StudentWorld Example: Assume that Married is a relationship type between Student and Student, which captures whom is married to whom. It is a 1-1 relationship since each Student is married to at most one other Student (let's not worry too much about students who currently have multiple wives or husbands!). one-to-many :- A one-to-many relationship type (1-N or 1:N) is one in which a single entity of one entity type can be related to several entities of another type, but each entity of the other type is related to at most one entity of mouthful!). the first type (wow, that's a

MovieWorld Example: Assume that Produces is a relationship type between Studio and Movie, which captures which studio produces which movies. It is a 1-N relationship

since each Studio may produce several

different Movies, but each movie can be

produced by at most one Studio (assuming that only one studio can produce a movie, let's not worry too much about collaboration between studios). StudentWorld Example: Assume that Teaches is a relationship type between Lecturers and Subjects, which captures which lecturer teaches which subject. It is a 1-N relationship since each Lecturer can teach several different subjects, but each Subject has a single Lecturer (let's not worry too much about subjects that have more than one lecturer). many-to-many :- A many-to-many relationship type (N-M or N:M) is one in which a single entity of one entity type is related to at most N entities of another type, and viceversa.

ssn

name gps m

grade takes

cno n

title Course

credit

Student

MovieWorld Example: Assume that StarsIn is a relationship type between Star and Movie, which captures who stars in what movies. It is a N-M relationship since each Star may star in many different Movies, and each Movie may have many different Stars. StudentWorld Example: Assume that EnrolledIn is a relationship type between Student and Subject, which captures who is enrolled in what subject. It is a N-M relationship since each Student may enroll in many different Subjects, and each Subject may have many different Students. In an E/R diagram we depict a relationship type as a diagonal box. The cardinality ratio is also shown by adding 1, N, or M to the lines connecting the relationship type to the entity

type. Below is the outline of a one-to-many relationship type between two different entities. Let's look at some examples. MovieWorld Example: StarsIn is a relationship type between Star and Movie, which captures who stars in what movies. It is a N-M relationship since each Star may star in many different Movies. Let's also assume that for each movie that a star StarsIn, we have information on the Salary that the star was paid for that movie. So relationship types may also have attributes. Multiway Relationships Now you will have to think about the following. Really you will get puzzled! What does it say?

Parts

order r Projects

Suppliers

What if r = 1? What if both r =1 and n=1?

Degree of Relationships Degree. Number of entity types involved in a relationship type. (unary, binary, ternary, ..) Role. Part played by entities of a unary relationship Weak Entity type A weak entity type is an entity that needs the key attributes from another entity to uniquely identify tuples. Weak entities lack keys. In an E/R diagram a weak entity type is

represented by a nested pair of rectangles as shown below. The weak enitity is connected by an identifying or owning relationship to the entity type that supplies the key attributes, which in turn is called the owning entity type. An owning relationship is depicted as a nested pair of diamonds.

MovieWorld Example: Each Star could have several children. We choose to represent a Child entity type using ChildName and Age attributes. For instance assume that Meryl Streep has a child named Joe who is 6 years old. The key of the Star entity type needs to be used to help identify which Child is dependent on which Star since children in different families could be the same age with the same first name. For instance assume that Robert Redford also has a child named Joe who is 6 years old. We need the Star's key to identify which child is Owned by which Star, to keep the two Joe's separate. Review questions 1. What do you mean by entity? 2. What do you mean by an attribute? 3. What are the different types of attributes? 4. What do you mean by relationships? 5. What are the different types of relationships? 6. What do you mean by cardinality ratio? 7. Explain entity type, relationship types? 8. What do you mean by a weak entity? 9. References
1. Silbershatz, A., Korth, H. F., and Sudarshan, S., Database System Concepts (3rd edition), McGrawHill, 1997

2. Date, C.J., Introduction to Database Systems (7th Edition) Addison Wesley, 2000 3. Leon, Alexis and Leon, Mathews, Database Management Systems, LeonTECHWorld 4. Elamasri R . and Navathe, S., Fundamentals of Database Systems (3rd Edition), Pearsson Education, 2000.

Activities 1 Draw an E-R model for a Library Management Systems Database.