The Entity-Relationship Model: Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 1

The Entity-Relationship Model
Chapter 2
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke
Overview of Database Design

Conceptual design: (ER Model is used at this stage.)
What are the entities and relationships in the enterprise?
Students sign up for classes
What information about these entities and relationships should we store in the database?
Student number and phone number of each student
What are the integrity constraints or business rules that hold?
No student takes more than seven courses per semester
A database `schema in the ER Model can be represented pictorially (ER diagrams). Can map an ER diagram into a relational schema.
2
Entity & Entity Set
Entity: Real-world object distinguishable from other objects. An entity is described (in database) using a set of attributes.
Entity Set: A collection of similar entities, e.g., all employees.
All entities in an entity set have the same set of attributes (until we consider ISA hierarchies, anyway!)

Each attribute has a Key domain. Each entity set has a key ssn uniquely identifies an entity in the set Entity set
Attribute
name
lot Employees
3
Relationship
since name dname lot Employees
Works_In
ssn
did
budget Departments
Relationship: Association among two or more entities, e.g., Jessica works in Pharmacy department.
Relationship Set
since name ssn Employees lot
Works_In
dname did budget Departments
Relationship Set: Collection of similar relationships.
Relationship set
EMPLOYEES
WORKS_IN
DEPARTMENTS
An n-ary relationship set R relates n entity sets E1 ... En; each relationship in R involves entities e1 in E1, ..., en in En
A Ternary Relationship Example

since name
ssn
Employees
lot
Works_In
dname did
budget
Departments
Locations address Employees capacity Works_Ins
Each department has offices in several locations We want to record the locations at which each employee works
Works at two locations
Departments
Locations
Relationship Participation
Same entity set could participate in different relationship sets, or in different roles in the same set.
name
ssn lot
Employees participates in two different roles
Employees
supervisor
subordinate
Reports_To
Mapping to Tables
since name dname lot
Works_In
ssn
did
budget Departments
Employees
Employees
ssn name lot
Works_In
ssn 1234 did 8
Departments
did 8 dname DB budget 1,000,000
1234
Jenny
A456
Key Constraints: 1-to-Many
Consider Works_In: An employee can work in many departments; a dept can have many employees (many-tomamy relationship). In contrast, each dept has at most one manager, according to the key constraint on Manages (1-tomany relationship).
from name ssn
to dname did budget
lot
Employees
Works_In
manyto-many
Departments
since name ssn lot did dname budget
Employees
Manages
1-tomany
Departments
Key Constraints
since name ssn lot did dname budget
Employees
Manages
Departments
EMPLOYEES
MANAGES
DEPARTMENTS

1-to Many
Given a Departments entity, we can uniquely determine the Manages relationship in which it appears
10
Different Kinds of Relationships
Many-to-Many
1-to-1
1-to Many
Many-to-1
11
Participation Constraints
Does every department have a manager?
If so, this is a participation constraint
the participation of Departments in Manages is said to be total (vs. partial). Every did value in Departments table must appear in a row of the Manages table (with a non-null ssn value! - more details later in this course)
name ssn Employees since dname
lot Manages
did
budget Departments
Works_In
Partial participation
since
Total participation
(a participation constraint)
12
Total vs. Partial Participation

Does every department have a manager ?
Employees Manages Departments
Employees
Manages
Departments
Employees Employees
Manages Manages
Departments Departments

Partial Participation

Has no manager
Total Participation
Everyone has a manager
13
Weak Entities
A weak entity can be identified uniquely only by considering the primary key of another (owner) entity.

Owner entity set and weak entity set must participate in a oneto-many relationship set (one owner, many weak entities). Weak entity set must have total participation in this identifying relationship set.
Partial key name ssn lot cost dpname age
Employees
Policy
Dependents
The owner entity set
A weak entity set

Draw both with dark lines to indicate that Policy is the identifying relationship
14
Need both ssn and dpname to identify a Dependents entity
ISA (`is a) Hierarchies

name ssn lot
Employees
As in C++, or other PLs, hourly_wages attributes are inherited. If we declare A ISA B, every A entity is also considered to be a B entity.
hours_worked ISA contractid
Hourly_Emps
Contract_Emps
Overlap constraints: Can Joe be an Hourly_Emps as well as a Contract_Emps entity? (Allowed/disallowed)
Covering constraints: Does every Employees entity also have to be an Hourly_Emps or a Contract_Emps entity? (Yes/no)
15
ISA (is a) Hierarchies

hourly_wages
ssn
name lot
Employees
hours_worked ISA
Reasons for using ISA
Manages
To add descriptive attributes specific to a subclass

Example: We only need to track hours worked for hourly employees
Hourly_Emps Contract_Emps
contractid
To identify entities that participate in a relationship

Example: Only contract employees can be managers (i.e., participating in the Manages relationship)
16
Aggregation
name ssn Employees lot
Used when we have to model a relationship involving (entity sets and) a relationship set.
started_on pid Projects
Monitors
until
Aggregation allows us to treat a relationship set as an entity set for purpose of participation in (other) relationships
since did
dname budget
pbudget
Sponsors
Departments
Aggregation vs. ternary relationship: Monitors is a distinct relationship, with a descriptive attribute. Also, can say that each sponsorship is monitored by at most one employee.
Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke 17
Conceptual Design Using the ER Model
Design choices:

Should a concept be modeled as an entity or an attribute? Should a concept be modeled as an entity or a relationship? Identifying relationships: Binary or ternary? Aggregation?
Constraints in the ER Model:

A lot of data semantics can (and should) be captured.
But some constraints cannot be captured in ER diagrams, e.g., functional dependencies (discussed later in this course)
18
Entity vs. Attribute (1)

Should address be an attribute of Employees or an entity (connected to Employees by a relationship)?
Option 1
name ssn address
lot
name ssn Employees lot Street City State Address
Employees
live_at
Option 2
Entity vs. Attribute (2)
Depends upon the use we want to make of address information, and the semantics of the data:
If we have several addresses per employee, address must be an entity (since attributes cannot be set-valued).
If the structure (city, street, etc.) is important, e.g., we want to retrieve employees in a given city, address must be modeled as an entity (since attribute values are atomic).
name address lot name
Employees can have multiple addresses Can retrieve employees in a given city
ssn
City lot live_at Street State Address

20
ssn
Employees Employees
Entity vs. Attribute (Contd.)

name ssn lot Works_In4 from to
dname
did budget Departments
Employees
Works_In4 does
ssn Same key value 1234 1234
did 9 9
from 1998 2006
to 2002 2009
not allow an employee to work in a department for two or more periods
same instance
Entity vs. Attribute (Contd.)
Works_In4 does not allow an employee to work in a department for two or more periods. Similar to the problem of wanting to record several addresses for an employee:
name
dname
ssn
Employees
lot
Works_In5
did
budget Departments
from
Duration
to
Works_In5
ssn 1234 1234 did 9 9 from 1998 2006 to 2002 2009
We want to record several values of the descriptive attributes for each instance of this relationship. Accomplished by introducing new entity set, Duration.
22
Entity vs. Relationship
First ER diagram OK if a manager gets a separate discretionary budget for each dept. What if a manager gets a discretionary budget that covers all managed depts?
since name ssn Employees name lot
dbudget dname did
budget
Departments
Manages2
ssn Employees
lot since did dname budget Departments
Redundancy: dbudget stored for each dept managed by manager. Misleading: Suggests dbudget associated with department-mgr combination.
ISA
Manages2
Managers
dbudget
This fixes the problem !

23
Binary vs. Ternary Relationships (1)

name 1. An employee can own several policies 2. Each policy can be owned by several employee 3. Each dependent can be covered by several policies ssn Employees lot Covers pname age Dependents
Policies policyid cost Joint policy
If each policy is owned by just one employee, and each dependent is tied to the covering policy, we need some constraints Owns 2
policies
Employees
Covers
Policy
Dependents Covered by 2 policies

24
Binary vs. Ternary Relationships (2)

Constraints: Each policy is owned by just one employee, and each dependent is tied to the covering policy.
name pname lot Dependents Employees Purchaser Beneficiary age
ssn
Key constraint A policy cannot be owned jointly by two or more employees Total participation Every policy must be owned by some employee
Policies policyid cost
Weak entity set Each dependent is uniquely identified by a policy (i.e., policyid and pname)
25
When to use N-ary Relationships ?

qty
Suppliers Contracts Departments
Parts
No combination of binary relationships is an adequate substitute for the above ternary relationship:
The binary relationships S can-supply P, D needs P, and D deals-with S do not imply that D has agreed to buy P from S. How do we record qty in the binary relationships ?
26
Example: University Database

We have four entity sets: Professor, Project, Graduate, Department
rank age ssn Specialty
pid
sponsor start-date end_date
Professor
Project
budget
Dept
dno dname Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke office
Graduate
ssn age name deg_prog 27
Each project is managed by one professor (principal investigator) Professors can manage multiple projects
rank age ssn Specialty
pid
Professor
Manages
Project
budget
Dept
Graduate
grad
ssn
age
name
deg_prog 28
Each project is worked on by one or more professors (co-investigators) Professors can work on multiple projects
rank age ssn Specialty Work_in
pid
Professor
Manages
Project
budget
Dept
Graduate
ssn
age
name
deg_prog 29
Each project is worked on by one or more graduate students (research assistants) Graduate students can work on multiple projects
pid
Professor
Manages
Project
budget
Work_proj
hours
Dept
Graduate
ssn
age
name
deg_prog 30
When graduate students work on multiple projects, they must have a supervisor (professor) for each one.
pid
Professor
Manages
Project
budget
Supervises
Work_proj
hours
Dept
Graduate
ssn
age
name
deg_prog 31

Departments have a professor who runs the department
pid
Professor
Manages
Project
budget
Runs
Supervises
Work_proj
hours
Dept
Graduate
ssn
age
name
deg_prog 32
Professors work in one or more departments For each department a professor works in, a time percentage is associated with their job
pid
Professor
Manages
Project
budget
Work_dept
Runs
Supervises
Work_proj
hours
pc_time
Dept
dno dname office
Graduate
ssn
age
name
deg_prog 33

Graduate students have one major department in which they are working on their degree
pid
Professor
Manages
Project
budget
Work_dept
Runs
Supervises
Work_proj
hours
pc_time
Dept
dno dname office
Major
Graduate
ssn
age
name
deg_prog 34

Each graduate student has another, more senior graduate student who advises him or her on what courses to take
pid
Professor
Manages
Project
budget
Work_dept
Runs
Supervises
Work_proj
hours
pc_time
senior
Dept
dno dname office
Major
Graduate
grad
Advisor
ssn
age
name
deg_prog 35

pid
Professor
Manages
Project
budget
Work_dept
Runs
Supervises
Work_proj
hours
pc_time
senior
Dept
dno dname office
Major
Graduate
grad
Advisor
ssn
age
name
deg_prog 36
Summary of Conceptual Design
Conceptual design follows requirements analysis
Yields a high-level description of data to be stored Constructs are expressive, close to the way people think about their applications.
ER model popular for conceptual design
Basic constructs: entities, relationships, and attributes (of entities and relationships).
Some additional constructs: weak entities, ISA hierarchies, and aggregation.
Note: There are many variations on ER model.

37
Summary of ER (Contd.)
Several kinds of integrity constraints can be expressed in the ER model:

key constraints, participation constraints, and overlap/covering constraints for ISA hierarchies. Some foreign key constraints are also implicit in the definition of a relationship set (more later in the course). Some constraints (notably, functional dependencies) cannot be expressed in the ER model. Constraints play an important role in determining the best database design for an enterprise.
38
Summary of ER (Contd.)
There are often many ways to model a given scenario! Analyzing alternative ER designs can be tricky. Common choices include:
Entity vs. attribute, entity vs. relationship, binary or n-ary relationship, whether or not to use ISA hierarchies, and whether or not to use aggregation.
Ensuring good database design: resulting relational schema should be analyzed and refined further.
Functional dependency information and normalization techniques are especially useful (discussed later).
39
Homework #1
Do Exercises 2.4 and 2.8 in the textbook
Due: 01/26/2012
40

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The Entity-Relationship Model

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Overview of Database Design

What are the entities and relationships in the enterprise?

Students sign up for classes

Student number and phone number of each student

What are the integrity constraints or business rules that hold?

No student takes more than seven courses per semester

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Entity & Entity Set

Entity Set: A collection of similar entities, e.g., all employees.

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

dname did budget Departments

Relationship Set: Collection of similar relationships.

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

A Ternary Relationship Example

Locations address Employees capacity Works_Ins

Works at two locations

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Employees participates in two different roles

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Key Constraints: 1-to-Many

from name ssn

to dname did budget

since name ssn lot did dname budget

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Different Kinds of Relationships

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

If so, this is a participation constraint

Total vs. Partial Participation

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Everyone has a manager

The owner entity set

A weak entity set

Need both ssn and dpname to identify a Dependents entity

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

ISA (`is a) Hierarchies

name ssn lot

hours_worked ISA contractid

Overlap constraints: Can Joe be an Hourly_Emps as well as a Contract_Emps entity? (Allowed/disallowed)

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

ISA (is a) Hierarchies

Reasons for using ISA

To add descriptive attributes specific to a subclass

To identify entities that participate in a relationship

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

name ssn Employees lot

Conceptual Design Using the ER Model

Constraints in the ER Model:

A lot of data semantics can (and should) be captured.

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Entity vs. Attribute (1)

Entity vs. Attribute (2)

City lot live_at Street State Address

Database Management Systems 3ed, R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke

Entity vs. Attribute (Contd.)

ssn Same key value 1234 1234

from 1998 2006

not allow an employee to work in a department for two or more periods