Topic 3 & 4 Entity Relationship Modelling

Er. Pradip Kharbuja

Entity Relationship(ER) Diagram

We will learn to develop ER Diagram in this topic.

Entity
An entity can be defined as anything, which can be uniquely identified and about which data is stored in a database. A place, person, picture, concept (e.g. course, position, job) are the example of an entity. Some other examples can be student, workers, car, departments, etc.

Entity Type
An entity type is a collection of similar entities. An entity-type is a category. An entity type is a group of objects, people, concepts or other items that have the same set of properties or attributes.

Entity Relationship(ER) Modelling

In 1976, Peter Chen first proposed modeling databases using a graphical technique that humans can relate easily. An EntityRelationship (ER) model is an abstract or conceptual way of describing a database An ER Model is based on a perception of a real world that consists of collection of basic objects called entities and relationships among these objects.

Entity Relationship(ER) Modelling

The ER model achieves a high degree of data independence which means that the database designer do not have to worry about the physical structure of the database.

The goal of ER Modelling is to produce a model of data that is nontechnical and free of ambiguities

Entity Relationship(ER) Diagram

ER diagram is a graphical modelling to standardize ER modelling. The modeling can be carried out with the help of pictorial representation of entities, attributes, and relationships.

Attributes
An attribute is a property of an entity type. The data that we want to keep about each entity within an entity type is contained in attributes. Examples of Attributes : 1. Roll number, name and grade are the attributes of Student. 2. Brand, cost and weight are the attributes of Cellphone. 3. Book name, price, author, publisher, etc. are attributes of Book.

Types of Attributes
1. Single-valued attribute 2. Multi-valued attribute 3. Simple Attribute

4. Composite Attribute
5. Key Attribute 6. Derived Attribute

7. Attribute Domain

Types of Attributes
1. Single-valued attribute : Attribute that holds a single value for an occurrence of an entity type. E.g. age, first_name, last_name, full_name, etc.

2. Multi-valued attribute : Attribute where there might be more than one value for a given occurrence of an entity type, e.g. for the 'Telephone Number', where a person or company might have many of these.

Types of Attributes
3. Simple Attribute It is composed of a single component. e.g. age, first_name, last_name, etc. But full_name is not simple attribute. Because it is composed of first_name and last_name. 4. Composite Attribute It is composed of more than one component. For example, 'address' might have city, state, country, zip code, etc.

Types of Attributes
5. Key Attribute Primary Key is a key attribute. Not Null and Unique attribute of an entity At most one attribute in each entity 6. Derived Attribute The value of the derived attribute can be derived from the values of other attributes Age of a person can be derived from the date of birth and current date i.e. age = current date date of birth.

Types of Attributes
7. Attribute Domain A domain is the set of allowable values for an attribute or number of attributes. A domain therefore limits the values that an attribute can have. For example, the domain of 'gender' would include the values 'Male' and 'Female'. Similarly, the domain of fruit would include the values 'Apple', 'Orange' etc.

Relationship
A relationship is an association of entities showing how the entities are related with each other. The examples of relationship are: Teaching is the relationship between Lecturer and Student. Buying is the relationship between Vendor and Customer. Treatment is the relationship between Doctor and Patient.

Types of Relationship or Multiplicity

Number or range of possible occurrences of an entity type in relation to another entity type 1. One-to-One (1 : 1) 2. One-to-Many (1 : N) 3. Many-to-One (N : 1) 4. Many-to-Many (M : N)

Types of Relationship
1. One-to -One (1 : 1) Each department can have only one department head. Each person can have only one age.

2.

One-to-Many (1 : N) One course can have many students registered. A lecturer may be teaching to many students.

Types of Relationship
3. Many-to-One (N : 1) Many cities come under one country. Many books can be written by one writer. Many authors can write one book. 4. Many-to-Many (M : N) An Author can write several Books, and a Book can be written by several Authors A teacher teaches many class and a class studies from many teachers.

ER Diagram Notation (CHEN)

Represents an entity set Represents an attribute Represent linking of attributes to entity sets and of entity sets to relationship sets.

Represents a relationship

ER Diagram

ER Diagram
Draw an ER Diagram for ClassRoom which has two attributes : room_no and building_name.

ER Diagram

Task : Draw ER Diagram in MS-Visio

Email the visio file within one week.

Multiplicity
A teacher teaches only one subject.

A teacher teaches many subjects.

Classification of Entity Sets (CHEN)

Entity sets can be broadly classified into: Strong entity Strong entity is one whose existence does not depend on other entity. Weak entity is an entity that depends on another entity. Weak entity doesn't have key attribute of their own. Associative entity is used to create many-to-many relationship between different entities

Weak entity

Associative or composite entity

Classification of Entity Sets (CHEN)

Consider the example, student takes course. Here student is a strong entity. Course is considered as weak entity because, if there are no students to take a particular course, then that course cannot be offered. The Course entity depends on the student entity.

Associative or Composite entity

The database relational model does not offer direct support to manyto-many relationships. So, we require associative or composite entity. Consider the example, customer purchases book. A customer can purchase many books. And a book can be purchased by many customers. So, here purchases is an associative entity. The entity purchases is mediator for customer and book.

Attribute Notation (CHEN)

Single Valued Attribute Multi-valued Attribute Key Attribute Derived Attribute Composite Attribute

Multi-valued Attribute
An employee has full name, age and can have more than one qualifications.

Key Attribute
Primary Key A department has Primary Key dept_no, department_name and location

Derived Attribute
The value of the derived attribute can be derived from the values of other related attributes. Age of a person can be derived from the date of birth and current date i.e. age = current date date of birth. In this example, age is the derived attribute.

Composite Attribute
Composite attribute is one which can be further subdivided into simple attributes.

Task : ER Diagram
1. Draw an ER diagram for student. 2. Draw an ER diagram for customers and loan relation. 3. Draw an ER diagram for hospital with a set of patients and medical doctors. 4. Draw an ER diagram for banking system. 5. Draw an ER diagram for car insurance company.

Relationship Degree
Relationship degree refers to the number of associated entities in a relationship. The relationship degree can be broadly classified into 1. Unary(Recursive) relationship 2. Binary relationship 3. Ternary relationship

Unary(Recursive) relationship
The number of associated entity is one. An entity related to itself is known as recursive relationship.

Binary relationship
In a binary relationship, two entities are involved. Consider the example: each department will have many workers.

Ternary relationship
In a ternary relationship, three entities are simultaneously involved. Example : Consider a project is assigned to many employee. And the project is assigned to one location.

ER Diagram Notation (CROW'S FEET)

Entity
Entity Name

Relationship
Illustrates an association between two entities. It has a name which is a verb. It also has cardinality.

Entity Name
PK

attribute name

is assigned to

attribute name attribute name

ER Diagram Notation (CROW'S FEET)

Cardinality
Cardinality refers to the maximum number of times an instance in one entity can be associated with instances in the related entity. It can be zero or one or more. zero or more one or more one and only one zero or 1

Some examples (CROW'S FEET)

teacher
teaches

course

student
takes

course

ER Diagram Notation (UML)

A Plane Ticket System A passenger may book many tickets. Each ticket is for one flight and one passenger.

A flight has many passenger.

1 0..N 0..N 1

Passenger

Ticket

Flight

Many-to-Many Relationship
Module having many Students and Students taking many Modules
0..N 0..N

Module
Attributes ModuleID(PK) ModuleName

Taken By

Student
Attributes StudentID(PK) StudentName

Many-to-Many Relationship
Module
Attributes ModuleID(PK) ModuleName
1 0..N
0..N

ModuleStudent
Attributes ModuleID(FK) StudentID(FK)

Student
Attributes StudentID(PK) StudentName

ER Diagram Notation (UML)

A Book is written by one or more authors. An author writes one or more Books. A Category may have zero or many books. [Note : Many to Many Relationship cannot be shown in relational model]
Category
1
0..N

1..N

1..N

Book

Book Author

Author

A Gardening Company
The company hires out workers as they need to. Workers in the town stay in lodgings. A lodging may have many workers in it. We are only concerned with the workers current

lodging. Workers possess certain skills such as Tree Surgery and

Garden Design. They may have more than one skill.

[Note : Try to identify nouns that could possibly be entities.]

A Gardening Company - Nouns

The company hires out workers as they need to. Workers in the town stay in lodgings. A lodging may have many workers in it. We are only concerned with the workers current

lodging. Workers possess certain skills such as Tree Surgery and

Garden Design. They may have more than one skill.

[Note : We are only concerned with one town. So, town is not entity here. But 'Town' is an attribute of the Lodging.]

Possible Solution
1 0..* 0..* 1

Worker
0..*

Worker Skill

Skill

Lodging

Primary Key
The PRIMARY KEY constraint uniquely identifies each record in a database table. Primary keys must contain unique values. A primary key column cannot contain NULL values. Each table should have a primary key, and each table can have only ONE primary key. departments -----------------------dept_no (PK) department_name location

Foreign Key
A FOREIGN KEY in one table points to a PRIMARY KEY in another table A FOREIGN KEY is a column or a combination of columns that is used to establish and enforce a link between two tables or entities. departments -----------------------dept_no (PK) department_name location workers -----------------emp_no (PK) first_name last_name age job_title dept_no (FK)

Creating Foreign Key

A Problem
A campus may have one or many staffs. Also a campus may have one or many department. 1..* 1 1 1..*

Staff

Campus

Department

A Problem
Campus
Campus ID
C1 C2 C3

Staff
Staff ID S1 S2 S3 Name Eric Hudson Sandra Smith Malia Shah Campus ID (FK) C2 C1 C1

Campus Name
Softwarica Islington The British College

Department
Department ID D1 D2 D3 Name Humanities Computing Maths Campus ID (FK) C1 C2 C2

Now the question is : In which Department does Eric work?

The Solution
The solution is to adopt a different structure where we have a Campus having one or more Departments which in turn have one or more Staff.

Staff

1..*

1..* Department

Campus

The Solution
Campus
Campus ID
C1 C2 C3

Staff
Staff ID S1 S2 S3 Name Eric Hudson Sandra Smith Malia Shah Department ID (FK) D3 D1 D1

Campus Name
Softwarica Islington The British College

Department
Department ID D1 D2 D3 Name Humanities Computing Maths Campus ID (FK) C1 C2 C2

Now do you know in which Department does Eric work?

Presentation
Fan Traps Chasm Traps Pronunciation /kaz()m/

Problems with ER Models

There are several problems that may arise when designing a ER model. These are known as connection traps. There are two main types of connection traps: 1. Fan traps 2. Chasm traps

Fan Traps
Fan traps occur in a situation when a model represents relationship between entity types however a path between certain entity occurrences is ambiguous.

Staff

1..*

Campus

1..*

Department

Example: (Staff)-1:N-works in-1-(Campus)-1-has-1:N-(Department).

In this model, it may be impossible to determine the department a staff belongs to.

Fan Traps The Solution

Restructuring the model resolves trap (Campus)-1-has-1:N(Department)-1-has-1:N-(Staff) Staff 1..*

1..* Department

Campus

Chasm Traps
Chasm Traps occur where there are relationships between entities, but one of the relationships is non-mandatory. A model suggests the existence of a relationship between entity types, but the pathway does not exist between certain entity occurrences. This connection traps is known as Chasm Traps.

http://db.grussell.org/section005.html

Chasm Traps The Problem

A branch has many staff members who manage properties, but not all properties are managed by a member of staff, and not all staff manage properties.

Branch

1...*

Staff

0...1

0...*

Property

Chasm Traps The Problem

Branch
Branch ID 1 2 Branch Name Ilford Redbridge Property Property ID P1 P2 P2 Property Name Yap Mansions Hill House Usher House Staff ID (FK) S1 S2 Staff ID S1 S2 S3

Staff
Name Davinda Roberta Eddie Branch ID (FK) 1 1 2

Which Branch manages Hill House?

Because Hill House is not managed by a member of Staff, we do not know from which Branch that Property is managed.

Chasm Traps The Solution

The solution is to change the structure and represent both relationships.

1 Branch 1

1...* Staff

0...1

0...* Property 0...*

Chasm Traps The Solution

Branch Branch ID 1 2 Branch Name Ilford Redbridge Property Property ID P1 P2 P2 Property Name Yap Mansions Hill House Usher House S1 S2 Staff ID S1 S2 S3 Staff ID (FK) Staff Name Branch ID (FK) Davinda 1 Roberta 1 Eddie 2 Branch ID (FK) 1 2 2 We now know which Branch manages Hill House

Draw the ER : Car Hire Company

Company has a number of models of car available for hire. Customers hire cars and this is recorded against a particular car rather than a model, as the company might have several cars of the same model.

When a customer wants to reserve a particular model they can do so. This is recorded against a model rather than the car.
When a car of that model becomes available, it will be held for the customer. When they come in for it, a record is made on the reservation to say which car satisfied the reservation.

Draw the ER : Car Hire Company

Company has a number of models of car available for hire. Customers hire cars and this is recorded against a particular car rather than a model, as the company might have several cars of the same model.

When a customer wants to reserve a particular model they can do so. This is recorded against a model rather than the car.
When a car of that model becomes available, it will be held for the customer. When they come in for it, a record is made on the reservation to say which car satisfied the reservation.

Car Hire Company

1 0..N 0..N 1

Car
0..N 1

Hire

Customer
1 1 0..N 0..N 0..N 1

Model

Reservation

Task
1. A customer records systems for a mail order beauty products company. A customer is assigned to one and only one geographical region. A customer may be interested in a number of different product lines. Any particular product line belongs to one product category that may contain many product lines.

2. Aboat is rented toa customer for a set periodof time. Any damage to the boat is recorded for that particular rental.
3. The shop needs to keep track of rentals. A member can rent films. A film can be rented by many members. A film can be rented by the same member more than once.

References
http://www.studytonight.com/dbms/er-diagram.php http://www.blackwasp.co.uk/SQLDerivedTables.aspx http://www2.cs.uregina.ca/~bernatja/crowsfoot.html

http://revj.sourceforge.net/traps.html
http://db.grussell.org/section005.html

END OF TOPIC 3 & 4

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