Chapter 6: Database Design Using the E-R

Model

Database System Concepts, 7th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 Outline

▪ Overview of the Design Process

▪ The Entity-Relationship Model
▪ Complex Attributes
▪ Mapping Cardinalities
▪ Primary Key
▪ Removing Redundant Attributes in Entity Sets
▪ Reducing ER Diagrams to Relational Schemas
▪ Extended E-R Features
▪ Entity-Relationship Design Issues
▪ Alternative Notations for Modeling Data
▪ Other Aspects of Database Design

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.2 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Outline

▪ Extended E-R Features

▪ Entity-Relationship Design Issues
▪ Alternative Notations for Modeling Data
▪ Other Aspects of Database Design

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.3 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Design Phases

▪ Initial phase -- characterize fully the data needs of the

prospective database users.
▪ Second phase (conceptual-design)-- choosing a data model
• Applying the concepts of the chosen data model
• Translating these requirements into a conceptual schema
of the database.
• A fully developed conceptual schema indicates the
functional requirements of the enterprise.
▪ Describe the kinds of operations (or transactions) that
will be performed on the data.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.4 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Design Phases (Cont.)

▪ Final Phase -- Moving from an abstract data model to the

implementation of the database
• Logical Design – Deciding on the database schema.
▪ Database design requires that we find a “good” collection of
relation schemas.
▪ Business decision – What attributes should we record in the
database?
▪ Computer Science decision – What relation schemas
should we have and how should the attributes be
distributed among the various relation schemas?
• Physical Design – Deciding on the physical layout of the
database
▪ the form of file organization and choice of index structures,

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.5 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Design Alternatives
▪ In designing a database schema, we must ensure that we avoid
two major pitfalls:
• Redundancy: a bad design may result in repeat information.
▪ Redundant representation of information may lead to data
inconsistency among the various copies of information
▪ For example, if we store the course identifier and title of a
course with each course offering, the title would be stored
redundantly (i.e.,multiple times, unnecessarily) with each
course offering. It would suffice to store only the course
identifier with each course offering, and to associate the
title with the course identifier only once, in a course entity.
• Incompleteness: a bad design may make certain aspects of
the enterprise difficult or impossible to model.
▪ Avoiding bad designs is not enough. There may be a large
number of good designs from which we must choose.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.6 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Design Approaches

▪ Entity Relationship Model (covered in this chapter)

• Models an enterprise as a collection of entities and
relationships
▪ Entity: a “thing” or “object” in the enterprise that is
distinguishable from other objects
• Described by a set of attributes
▪ Relationship: an association among several entities
• Represented diagrammatically by an entity-relationship
diagram:
▪ Normalization Theory (Chapter 7)
• Formalize what designs are bad, and test for them

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.7 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Outline of the ER Model

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.8 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 ER model -- Database Modeling

▪ The ER data model was developed to facilitate database

design by allowing specification of an enterprise schema that
represents the overall logical structure of a database.
▪ The ER data model employs three basic concepts:
• entity sets,
• relationship sets,
• attributes.
▪ The ER model also has an associated diagrammatic
representation, the ER diagram, which can express the overall
logical structure of a database graphically.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.9 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Entity Sets

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

other objects.
• Example: specific person, company, event, plant
▪ 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
▪ An entity is represented by a set of attributes; i.e., descriptive
properties possessed by all members of an entity set.
• Example:
instructor = (ID, name, salary )
course= (course_id, title, credits)
▪ A subset of the attributes form a primary key of the entity
set; i.e., uniquely identifying each member of the set.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.10 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Entity Sets -- instructor and student

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 Representing Entity sets in ER Diagram

▪ Entity sets can be represented graphically as follows:

• Rectangles represent entity sets.
• Attributes listed inside entity rectangle
• Underline indicates primary key attributes

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.12 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Attributes
▪ Attributes are properties hold by each member of an entity set.
▪ E.g. entity is student and attributes of student are enrollmentno,
name, address, cpi etc
Types of attributes
▪ Simple attribute: It cannot be divided into subparts. E.g. cpi,
rollno
▪ Composite attribute: It can be divided into subparts. E.g. name
(first-name, middlename, last-name), address.
▪ Single valued attribute: It has single data value. E.g.
enrollment_no, birthdate
▪ Multi valued attribute: It has multiple data value. E.g. phoneno
(may have multiple phones).
▪ Stored attribute: It’s value is manually stored in database. E.g.
birthDate
▪ Derived attribute: It’s value is derived or calculated from other
attributes. E.g. Age ( It can be calculated using current date and
birthdate).
Domain – the set of permitted values for each attribute
Database System Concepts - 7th 6.13 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Composite Attributes

▪ Composite attributes allow us to divided attributes into

subparts (other attributes).

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 Representing Complex Attributes in ER Diagram

Composite Attribute

Multivalued Attribute

Derived Attribute
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 Relationship Sets

▪ A relationship is an association among several entities

Example:
44553 (Peltier) advisor 22222 (Einstein)
student entity relationship set instructor entity
▪ A relationship set is a mathematical relation among n ≥ 2
entities, each taken from entity sets
{(e1, e2, … en) | e1 ∈ E1, e2 ∈ E2, …, en ∈ En}

where (e1, e2, …, en) is a relationship

• Example:
(44553,22222) ∈ advisor

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.16 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Relationship Sets (Cont.)

▪ Example: we define the relationship set advisor to denote

the associations between students and the instructors who
act as their advisors.
▪ Pictorially, we draw a line between related entities.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.17 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Representing Relationship Sets via ER Diagrams

▪ Diamonds represent relationship sets.

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 Relationship Sets (Cont.)

▪ An attribute can also be associated with a relationship set.

▪ For instance, the advisor relationship set between entity sets
instructor and student may have the attribute date which
tracks when the student started being associated with the
advisor

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.19 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Relationship Sets with Attributes

Descriptive attributes: A relationship may also have attributes like

an entity. These attributes are called descriptive attributes.

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 Descriptive Attributes

▪ An attribute of a relationship set is represented in an E-R

diagram by an undivided rectangle. We link the rectangle with a
dashed line to the diamond representing that relationship set.

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 Recursive relationship set

The same entity set participates in a relationship set

more than once then it is called recursive relationship
set.

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 Roles
▪ The function that an entity plays in a relationship is called that
entity’s role.
▪ Entity sets of a relationship need not be distinct
• Each occurrence of an entity set plays a “role” in the
relationship
▪ Since entity sets participating in a relationship set are generally
distinct, roles are implicit and are not usually specified.
▪ However, they are useful when the meaning of a relationship
needs clarification. Such is the case recursive relationship set,
explicit role names are necessary to specify how an entity
participates in a relationship instance.
▪ The labels “course_id” and “prereq_id” are called roles.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.23 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Degree of a Relationship Set

▪ The degree of a relationship is the number of entity types that

participate in the relationship.
▪ The three most common relationships in ER models are
Unary, Binary and Ternary.
▪ A unary relationship is when both participant entities in the
relationship are the same entity.
▪ Example: a course may be prerequisites for other course.

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 Degree of a Relationship Set

▪ Binary relationship
• involve two entity sets (or degree two).
• most relationship sets in a database system are binary.

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 Non-binary Relationship Sets
▪ Relationships between more than two entity sets are rare.
Most relationships are binary. (More on this later.)
▪ There are occasions when it is more convenient to represent
relationships as non-binary.
• Example: students work on research projects under the
guidance of an instructor.
• relationship proj_guide is a ternary relationship between
instructor, student, and project

▪ E-R Diagram with a Ternary Relationship

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.26 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Mapping Cardinality Constraints

▪ 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
▪ We express cardinality constraints by drawing either a
directed line (→), signifying “one,” or an undirected line (—),
signifying “many,” between the relationship set and the entity
set.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.27 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 One-to-one relationship

▪ An entity in A is associated with at

most (only) one entity in B and an
entity in B is associated with at most
(only) one entity in A.

▪ One-to-one relationship between an instructor and a student :

• A student is associated with at most one instructor via the
relationship advisor
• A student is associated with at most one department via
stud_dept

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.28 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 One-to-many relationship

▪ An entity in A is associated with any number

(zero or more) of entities in B and an entity in
B is associated with at most (only) one entity
in A.

▪ one-to-many relationship between an instructor and a student

• an instructor is associated with several (including 0) students
via advisor
• a student is associated with at most one instructor via
advisor,

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.29 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Many-to-One Relationships

An entity in A is associated with at most

(only) one entity in B and an entity in B is
associated with any number (zero or more)
of entities in A.

▪ In a many-to-one relationship between an instructor and a student,

• an instructor is associated with at most one student via advisor,
• and a student is associated with several (including 0) instructors via
advisor

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.30 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Many-to-Many Relationship

An entity in A is associated with any number

(zero or more) of entities in B and an entity in
B is associated with any number (zero or
more) of entities in A.

▪ An instructor is associated with several (possibly 0)

students via advisor
▪ A student is associated with several (possibly 0)
instructors via advisor

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.31 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Participation constraints
▪ It specifies the participation of an entity set in a relationship set.
▪ There are two types participation constraints
• Total participation
• Partial participation
▪ Total participation (indicated by double line): every entity in the
entity set participates in at least one relationship in the
relationship set. It is indicated by double line.

E.g. participation of student in advisor relation is total

▪ every student must have an associated instructor
▪ Partial participation: some entities may not participate in any
relationship in the relationship set
• Example: participation of instructor in advisor is partial

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.32 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Notation for Expressing More Complex Constraints

▪ A line may have an associated minimum and maximum cardinality, shown

in the form l..h, where l is the minimum and h the maximum cardinality
• A minimum value of 1 indicates total participation.
• A maximum value of 1 indicates that the entity participates in at
most one relationship
• A maximum value of * indicates no limit.
▪ Example

• Instructor can advise 0 or more students. A student must have 1

advisor; cannot have multiple advisors

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 Cardinality Constraints on Ternary Relationship
▪ We allow at most one arrow out of a ternary (or greater degree)
relationship to indicate a cardinality constraint
▪
▪ When deciding the participation constraints, we consider pairs of
attibutes:
• For a specific major and student, there is at most one faculty who is
an advisor.
• For a specific advisor and major, there could be many students.
• For specific student and faculty, there could be multiple majors that
the faculty is the advisor of (for example cog sci and games major).

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 Cardinality Constraints on Ternary Relationship

▪ If there is more than one arrow, there are two ways of defining
the meaning.
• For example, a ternary relationship R between A, B and C
with arrows to B and C could mean
1. Each A entity is associated with a unique entity
from B
and C or
2. Each pair of entities from (A, B) is associated with
a unique C entity, and each pair (A, C) is
associated with a unique B
• Each alternative has been used in different formalisms
• To avoid confusion we outlaw more than one arrow

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.35 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Primary Key

▪ Primary keys provide a way to specify how entities and

relations are distinguished. We will consider:
• Entity sets
• Relationship sets.
• Weak entity sets

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.36 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Primary key for Entity Sets

▪ By definition, individual entities are distinct.

▪ From database perspective, the differences among them
must be expressed in terms of their attributes.
▪ The values of the attribute values of an entity must be such
that they can uniquely identify the entity.
• No two entities in an entity set are allowed to have exactly
the same value for all attributes.
▪ A key for an entity is a set of attributes that suffice to
distinguish entities from each other

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.37 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Primary Key for Relationship Sets

▪ To distinguish among the various relationships of a relationship

set we use the individual primary keys of the entities in the
relationship set.
• Let R be a relationship set involving entity sets E1, E2, .. En
• The primary key for R is consists of the union of the
primary keys of entity sets E1, E2, ..En
• If the relationship set R has attributes a1, a2, .., am
associated with it, then the primary key of R also includes
the attributes a1, a2, .., am
▪ Example: relationship set “advisor”.
• The primary key consists of instructor.ID and student.ID
▪ The choice of the primary key for a relationship set depends
on the mapping cardinality of the relationship set.

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 Choice of Primary key for Binary Relationship

▪ Many-to-Many relationships. The preceding union of the

primary keys is a minimal superkey and is chosen as the
primary key.
▪ One-to-Many relationships . The primary key of the “Many”
side is a minimal superkey and is used as the primary key.
▪ Many-to-one relationships. The primary key of the “Many”
side is a minimal superkey and is used as the primary key.
▪ One-to-one relationships. The primary key of either one of the
participating entity sets forms a minimal superkey, and either
one can be chosen as the primary key.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.39 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Weak Entity Sets

▪ Consider a section entity, which is uniquely identified by a

course_id, semester, year, and sec_id.
▪ Clearly, section entities are related to course entities. Suppose
we create a relationship set sec_course between entity sets
section and course.
▪ Note that the information in sec_course is redundant, since
section already has an attribute course_id, which identifies the
course with which the section is related.
▪ One option to deal with this redundancy is to get rid of the
relationship sec_course; however, by doing so the
relationship between section and course becomes implicit in
an attribute, which is not desirable.

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 Weak Entity Sets (Cont.)

▪ An alternative way to deal with this redundancy is to not store

the attribute course_id in the section entity and to only store
the remaining attributes section_id, year, and semester.
• However, the entity set section then does not have enough
attributes to identify a particular section entity uniquely
▪ To deal with this problem, we treat the relationship sec_course
as a special relationship that provides extra information, in this
case, the course_id, required to identify section entities
uniquely.
▪ A weak entity set is one whose existence is dependent on
another entity, called its identifying entity
▪ Instead of associating a primary key with a weak entity, we use
the identifying entity, along with extra attributes called
discriminator to uniquely identify a weak entity.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.41 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Weak Entity Sets (Cont.)

▪ An entity set that is not a weak entity set is termed a strong

entity set.
▪ Every weak entity must be associated with an identifying
entity; that is, the weak entity set is said to be existence
dependent on the identifying entity set.
▪ The identifying entity set is said to own the weak entity set
that it identifies.
▪ The relationship associating the weak entity set with the
identifying entity set is called the identifying relationship.
▪ Note that the relational schema we eventually create from the
entity set section does have the attribute course_id, for
reasons that will become clear later, even though we have
dropped the attribute course_id from the entity set section.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.42 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Expressing Weak Entity Sets

▪ In E-R diagrams, a weak entity set is depicted via a double

rectangle.
▪ We underline the discriminator of a weak entity set with a
dashed line.
▪ The relationship set connecting the weak entity set to the
identifying strong entity set is depicted by a double
diamond.
▪ Primary key for section – (course_id, sec_id, semester, year)

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.43 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Redundant Attributes
▪ Suppose we have entity sets:
• student, with attributes: ID, name, tot_cred, dept_name
• department, with attributes: dept_name, building, budget
▪ We model the fact that each student has an associated
department using a relationship set stud_dept
▪ The attribute dept_name in student below replicates information
present in the relationship and is therefore redundant
• and needs to be removed.
▪ BUT: when converting back to tables, in some cases the attribute
gets reintroduced, as we will see later.

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E-R Diagram for a University Enterprise

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.45 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Reduction to Relational Schemas

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 Reduction to Relational Schemas

▪ Entity sets and relationship sets can be expressed uniformly

as relation schemas that represent the contents of the
database.
▪ A database which conforms to an E-R diagram can be
represented by a collection of schemas.
▪ For each entity set and relationship set there is a unique
schema that is assigned the name of the corresponding entity
set or relationship set.
▪ Each schema has a number of columns (generally
corresponding to attributes), which have unique names.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.47 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Representing Entity Sets

▪ A strong entity set reduces to a schema with the same

attributes

student(ID, name, tot_cred)

▪ A weak entity set becomes a table that includes a column for

the primary key of the identifying strong entity set

section ( course_id, sec_id, sem, year )

▪ Example

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.48 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Representation of Entity Sets with Composite Attributes

▪ Composite attributes are flattened out by

creating a separate attribute for each
component attribute
• Example: given entity set instructor with
composite attribute name with component
attributes first_name and last_name the
schema corresponding to the entity set has
two attributes name_first_name and
name_last_name
▪ Prefix omitted if there is no ambiguity
(name_first_name could be first_name)
▪ Ignoring multivalued attributes, extended
instructor schema is
• instructor(ID,
first_name, middle_initial, last_name,
street_number, street_name,
apt_number, city, state, zip_code,
Database System Concepts - 7th date_of_birth)
6.49 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Representation of Entity Sets with Multivalued Attributes

▪ A multivalued attribute M of an entity E is represented by a

separate schema EM
▪ Schema EM has attributes corresponding to the primary key
of E and an attribute corresponding to multivalued attribute M
▪ Example: Multivalued attribute phone_number of instructor is
represented by a schema:
inst_phone= ( ID, phone_number)
▪ Each value of the multivalued attribute maps to a separate
tuple of the relation on schema EM
• For example, an instructor entity with primary key 22222
and phone numbers 456-7890 and 123-4567 maps to two
tuples:
(22222, 456-7890) and (22222, 123-4567)

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.50 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Representing Relationship Sets
▪ one to one Relationship
▪ Let us consider the case where the Person has one wife.
You can place the primary key of the wife table wifeid in the
table Persons which we call in this case Foreign key as
shown below.
• Persons( personid, name, address, email , wifeid )
• Wife ( wifeid , name )
▪ Or vice versa to put the personid as a foreign key within the
wife table as shown below:
• Persons( personid, name, address, email )
• Wife ( wifeid , name , personid)
Person WIFE
Person_id Wife_id
Name HAS
Name
Address
Email
{Phone}
Database System Concepts - 7th 6.51 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Representing Relationship Sets

▪ A many-to-many relationship set is represented as a

schema with attributes for the primary keys of the two
participating entity sets, and any descriptive attributes of the
relationship set.
▪ Example: schema for relationship set advisor

advisor = (s_id, i_id)

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.52 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Redundancy of Schemas
▪ Many-to-one and one-to-many relationship sets that are total
on the many-side can be represented by adding an extra
attribute to the “many” side, containing the primary key of the
“one” side
▪ Example: Instead of creating a schema for relationship set
inst_dept, add an attribute dept_name to the schema arising
from entity set instructor
▪ Example

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 Redundancy of Schemas (Cont.)

▪ For one-to-one relationship sets, either side can be chosen to

act as the “many” side
• That is, an extra attribute can be added to either of the
tables corresponding to the two entity sets
▪ If participation is partial on the “many” side, replacing a
schema by an extra attribute in the schema corresponding to
the “many” side could result in null values

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.54 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Redundancy of Schemas (Cont.)

▪ The schema corresponding to a relationship set linking a weak

entity set to its identifying strong entity set is redundant.
▪ Example: The section schema already contains the attributes
that would appear in the sec_course schema

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 Extended E-R Features

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 Specialization
▪ Top-down design process; we designate sub-groupings within
an entity set that are distinctive from other entities in the set.
▪ These sub-groupings become lower-level entity sets that have
attributes or participate in relationships that do not apply to the
higher-level entity set.
▪ Depicted by a triangle component labeled
ISA (e.g., instructor “is a” person).
▪ Attribute inheritance – a lower-level
entity set inherits all the attributes and
relationship participation of the
higher-level entity set to which it is linked.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.57 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Representing Specialization via Schemas

▪ Method 1:
• Form a schema for the higher-level
entity
• Form a schema for each lower-level
entity set, include primary key of
higher-level entity set and local
attributes

• Drawback: getting information about,

an employee requires accessing two
relations, the one corresponding to the
low-level schema and the one
corresponding to the high-level
schema
Database System Concepts - 7th 6.58 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Representing Specialization as Schemas (Cont.)

▪ Method 2:
• Form a schema for each
entity set with all local and
inherited attributes

• Drawback: name, street and

city may be stored
redundantly for people who
are both students and
employees

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 Generalization
▪ A bottom-up design process – combine a number of entity sets that
share the same features into a higher-level entity set.
▪ A bottom-up design process that combines number of entity sets that
have same features into a higher-level entity set.
▪ The design process proceed in a bottom-up manner, in which multiple
entity sets are synthesized into a higher level entity set on the basis of
common features.

▪ Specialization and generalization

are simple inversions of each
other; they are represented in an
E-R diagram in the same way.
▪ The terms specialization and
generalization are used
interchangeably.

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 Specialization vs Generalization
Specialization Generalization
It will work in Top-down approach. It will work in Bottom-up
approach
The process of creating The process of creating groupings
sub-groupings within an entity set from
is called specialization. various entity sets is called
generalization.
Specialization is a process of Generalization is a process of
taking a sub set of higher level taking the union of two or more
entity set to form a lower-level lower-level entity sets to produce a
entity set. higher-level entity set.

Specialization starts from a single Generalization starts from the

entity set; it creates different number of entity sets and creates
low-level entity set using high-level entity set using some
somedifferent features. common features.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.61 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 types of constraints on specialization and
Generalization.
▪ Disjoint Constraint:
• Overlapping – an entity may belong to multiple specialized entity sets
▪ two separate arrows are used
• employee and student
• Disjoint – it must belong to at most one specialized entity set.
▪ a single arrow is used
• instructor and secretary

▪ Completeness constraint -- specifies

whether or not an entity in the
higher-level entity set must belong to at
least one of the lower-level entity sets
within a generalization.
• total: an entity must belong to one
of the lower-level entity sets
• partial: an entity need not belong to
one of the lower-level entity sets

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.62 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 types of constraints on specialization and
Generalization.
❖ Based on these two different kinds of constraints, a
specialization and generalization can be one of four types
➢ Total, Disjoint
➢ Total, Overlapping
➢ Partial, Disjoint
➢ Partial, Overlapping.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.63 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Completeness constraint (Cont.)

▪ Partial generalization is the default.

▪ We can specify total generalization in an ER diagram by
adding the keyword total in the diagram and drawing a
dashed line from the keyword to the corresponding hollow
arrow-head to which it applies (for a total generalization), or
to the set of hollow arrow-heads to which it applies (for an
overlapping generalization).
▪ The student generalization is total: All student entities must
be either graduate or undergraduate. Because the
higher-level entity set arrived at through generalization is
generally composed of only those entities in the lower-level
entity sets, the completeness constraint for a generalized
higher-level entity set is usually total

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.64 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Aggregation

▪ Consider the ternary relationship proj_guide, which we saw

earlier
▪ Suppose we want to record evaluations of a student by a
guide on a project

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.65 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Aggregation (Cont.)

▪ Relationship sets eval_for and proj_guide represent

overlapping information
• Every eval_for relationship corresponds to a proj_guide
relationship
• However, some proj_guide relationships may not
correspond to any eval_for relationships
▪ So we can’t discard the proj_guide relationship
▪ Eliminate this redundancy via aggregation
• Treat relationship as an abstract entity
• Allows relationships between relationships
• Abstraction of relationship into new entity

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.66 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Aggregation (Cont.)

▪ Eliminate this redundancy via aggregation without introducing

redundancy, the following diagram represents:
• A student is guided by a particular instructor on a particular
project
• A student, instructor, project combination may have an
associated evaluation

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.67 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Reduction to Relational Schemas

▪ To represent aggregation, create a schema containing

• Primary key of the aggregated relationship,
• The primary key of the associated entity set
• Any descriptive attributes
▪ In our example:
• The schema eval_for is:
eval_for (s_ID, project_id, i_ID, evaluation_id)
• The schema proj_guide is redundant.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.68 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Design Issues

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.69 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Common Mistakes in E-R Diagrams

▪ Example of erroneous E-R diagrams

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.70 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Common Mistakes in E-R Diagrams (Cont.)

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.71 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Entities vs. Attributes

▪ Use of entity sets vs. attributes

▪ Use of phone as an entity allows extra information about phone numbers

(plus multiple phone numbers)

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.72 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Entities vs. Relationship sets

▪ Use of entity sets vs. relationship sets

Possible guideline is to designate a relationship set to describe
an action that occurs between entities

▪ Placement of relationship attributes

For example, attribute date as attribute of advisor or as
attribute of student

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.73 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Binary Vs. Non-Binary Relationships

▪ Although it is possible to replace any non-binary (n-ary, for n > 2)

relationship set by a number of distinct binary relationship sets, a n-ary
relationship set shows more clearly that several entities participate in a
single relationship.
▪ Some relationships that appear to be non-binary may be better
represented using binary relationships
• For example, a ternary relationship parents, relating a child to his/her
father and mother, is best replaced by two binary relationships,
father and mother
▪ Using two binary relationships allows partial information (e.g.,
only mother being known)
• But there are some relationships that are naturally non-binary
▪ Example: proj_guide

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.74 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Converting Non-Binary Relationships to Binary Form

▪ In general, any non-binary relationship can be represented using

binary relationships by creating an artificial entity set.
• Replace R between entity sets A, B and C by an entity set E,
and three relationship sets:
1. RA, relating E and A 2. RB, relating E and B

3. RC, relating E and C

• Create an identifying attribute for E and add any attributes of

R to E
• For each relationship (ai , bi , ci) in R, create
1. a new entity ei in the entity set E 2. add (ei , ai ) to RA
3. add (ei , bi ) to RB 4. add (ei , ci ) to RC

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.75 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Converting Non-Binary Relationships (Cont.)

▪ Also need to translate constraints

• Translating all constraints may not be possible
• There may be instances in the translated schema that
cannot correspond to any instance of R
▪ Exercise: add constraints to the relationships RA, RB
and RC to ensure that a newly created entity
corresponds to exactly one entity in each of entity sets
A, B and C
• We can avoid creating an identifying attribute by making E
a weak entity set (described shortly) identified by the three
relationship sets

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.76 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 E-R Design Decisions

▪ The use of an attribute or entity set to represent an object.

▪ Whether a real-world concept is best expressed by an entity
set or a relationship set.
▪ The use of a ternary relationship versus a pair of binary
relationships.
▪ The use of a strong or weak entity set.
▪ The use of specialization/generalization – contributes to
modularity in the design.
▪ The use of aggregation – can treat the aggregate entity set as
a single unit without concern for the details of its internal
structure.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.77 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Summary of Symbols Used in E-R Notation

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.78 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Symbols Used in E-R Notation (Cont.)

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.79 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Alternative ER Notations

▪ Chen, IDE1FX, …

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.80 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Alternative ER Notations
Chen IDE1FX (Crows feet notation)

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.81 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Exercise 6.1

6.1 Construct an E-R 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.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.82 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Exercise 6.1
Ans: One possible E-R diagram is shown in Figure 6.101.
Payments are modeled as weak entities since they are related to a
specific policy. Note that the participation of accident in the
relationship participated is not total, since it is possible that there
is an accident report where the participating car is unknown.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.83 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Exercise 6.1

Construct appropriate tables for the E-R diagram pf exercise 6.1

Ans: customer (customer_id, name. address)

car (licence_no, model)
policy (policy_id)
accident (report_id, date, place)
premium_payment( policy_id, payment_no, amount, due_date,
received_on)
owns ( licence_no, customer_id)
participated (report_id, licence_no)
payment( policy_id, payment_no)

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.84 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Exercise 6.2

6.2 Consider a database that includes the entity sets student,

course, and section from the university schema and that
additionally records the marks that students receive in different
exams of different sections.
a. Construct an E-R diagram that models exams as entities
and uses a ternary relationship as part of the design.
b. Construct an alternative E-R diagram that uses only a
binary relationship between student and section. Make sure
that only one relationship exists between a particular student
and section pair, yet you can represent the marks that a
student gets in different exams.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.85 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Exercise 6.2
a. The E-R diagram is shown in Figure 6.102. Note that an
alternative is to model examinations as weak entities related to a
section, rather than as strong entities. The marks relationship
would then be a binary relationship between student and exam,
without directly involving section.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.86 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Exercise 6.2

b. The E-R diagram is shown in Figure 6.103. Note that here we have not
modeled the name, place, and time of the exam as part of the relationship
attributes. Doing so would result in duplication of the information, once per
student, and we would not be able to record this information without an
associated student. If we wish to represent this information, we need to retain
a separate entity corresponding to each exam

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.87 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Exercise 6.3

6.3 Design an E-R diagram for keeping track of the scoring

statistics of your favorite sports team. You should store the
matches played, the scores in each match, the players in
each match, and individual player scoring statistics for each
match. Summary statistics should be modeled as derived
attributes with an explanation as to how they are computed.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.88 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Exercise 6.3
Answer: The diagram is shown in Figure 6.104. The derived
attribute season score is computed by summing the score values
associated with the player entity set via the played relationship
set.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.89 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 Exercise 6.7

6.7 A weak entity set can always be made into a strong entity
set by adding to its attributes the primary-key attributes of its
identifying entity set. Outline what sort of redundancy will
result if we do so.

Answer: The primary key of a weak entity set can be inferred from
its relationship with the strong entity set. If we add primary-key
attributes to the weak entity set, they will be present in both the
entity set, and the relationship set and they have to be the same.
Hence there will be redundancy.

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.90 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

 End of Chapter 6

Database System Concepts - 7th 6.91 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan