EER

Dr. Jenila Livingston L.M.

SCSE

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 Extended ER features

 Specialization and Generalization – Inheritance

 Aggregation

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 Specialization and Generalization

 An Example:
 Customers can have checking and savings accts
 Checking ~ Savings (many of the same attributes)

 Old Way:

Customer Has1 Savings Acct

acct_no balance interest

Has2 Checking Acct

acct_no balance overdraft

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 Specialization and Generalization

 An Example:
 Customers can have checking and savings accts
 Checking ~ Savings (many of the same attributes)

 New Way (Using ER

acct_no balance
Extended features):
Customer Has Account superclass

Isa

Savings Acct Checking Acct

interest overdraft

subclasses
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 Specialization and
Generalization - Inheritance

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 Specialization and
Generalization – UMI Notation
In terms of an E-R diagram, specialization is depicted by a hollow arrow-
head pointing from the specialized entity to the other entity

person
ID
name
address

customer
employee
credit-rating
salary

officer teller secretary

office-number station-number hours-worked
hours-worked

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 Specialization and
Generalization -Chen Notation

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 Specialization

 Inheritance relationships also referred to as a superclass-subclass relationships.

 Lower-level entity sets:

 Have attributes that do not apply to the higher-level entity set.
 Participate in relationships that do not apply to the higher-level entity set, e.g.,
airline employees, pilots, crew, agents, etc., but only pilots are certified
certified to fly certain aircraft types.

 Attribute inheritance – Lower-level entity sets are said to inherit all the
attributes and relationships from the higher-level entity sets to which they are
linked.

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 Specialization vs. Generalization

 Top-down design process (Specialization); we designate sub-

groupings within an entity set that are distinctive from other
entities in the set.

 Bottom-up design process (Generalization): combine a

number of entity sets that share the same features into a higher-
level entity set.

 The terms specialization and generalization are used

interchangeably, for the obvious reasons.

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 Specialization
and Generalization, Cont.

 A specialization/generalization relationship can

be:
 User Defined vs Condition Defined
 disjoint vs. overlapping
 total vs. partial

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 Specialization and Generalization

 Subclass Distinctions:
 1. User-Defined vs. Condition-Defined
 User: Membership in subclasses explicitly determined
(e.g., Person, Student, Teacher)
 Condition: Membership predicate associated with
subclasses - e.g: given below

Person

Isa

Child Adult Senior

age < 18 age 18 age 65

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 Specialization and Generalization

 Subclass Distinctions:
 2. Overlapping vs. Disjoint
 Overlapping: Entities can belong to >1 entity set
(e.g., Adult, Senior)
 Disjoint: Entities belong to exactly 1 entity set
(e.g., Child)

Person

Isa
Disjoint

Child Adult Senior

age < 18 age 18 age 65

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 Specialization and Generalization

 Subclass Distinctions:
 3. Total vs. Partial Membership
 Total: Every entity of superclass belongs to a subclass

Person

Isa

Child Adult Senior

age < 18 age 18 age 65

 Partial: Some entities of super class do not belong to any

subclass (e.g., if Adults condition is age 21, some entities are not
belonging to any subclass )

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 Specialization and Generalization

 Subclass Distinctions:
 3. Total vs. Partial Membership
 Total: Every entity of superclass belongs to a subclass

Person

Isa

Child Adult Senior

age < 18 age 21 age 65

 Partial: Some entities of super class do not belong to any

subclass (e.g., if Adults condition is age 21, (19,20) which is not
belonging to any subclass )

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 Aggregation

 E/R: No relationships between relationships

 E.g.: Associate loan officers with Borrows relationship set

Customer Borrows Loan

?
Loan_Officer

Employee

 Associate Loan Officer with Loan?

 What if we want a loan officer for every (customer, loan) pair?

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 Aggregation - Binary

 E/R: No relationships between relationships

 E.g.: Associate loan officers with Borrows relationship set

Customer Borrows Loan

Loan_Officer

Employee

 Associate Loan Officer with Borrows?

 Must First Aggregate

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Aggregation

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 E-R Diagram for a Banking
Enterprise (Chen’s Notation)

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 E-R Diagram
for the Banking Enterprise

branch
account branch-name
account-branch
account-number Branch-city
balance assets

depositor loan-branch

customer loan
customer- name borrower loan-number
customer-street amount
customer-city

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 E-R Diagram
for a University

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 Lets Try an Example!

Construct an ER diagram for a car insurance company whose customers own

one or more cars each. Each car has associated with it zero to any number of
recorded accidents.

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 Lets Try an Example!

From the 6th edition…

Construct an ER diagram for a car insurance company whose customers own

one or more cars each. Each car has associated with it zero to any number of
recorded accidents. Each insurance policy covers one or more cars, and has
one or more premium payments associated with it. Each payment is for a
particular period of time, and has an associated due date, and the date when
the payment was received.

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 Thank You!

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