Database System Concepts and PL/SQL[ 20CS34P] 2021-22

DATABASE DESIGN

Introduction

2. 1 Data Model:

A data model is used in the database design process. It aims to identify & organize the
required data. A data model says what information is to be contained in the database, how the
information will be used, and how the items in the database will be related to each other.

The data model is used to describe the structure of the data base- data types,
relationships & constraints that should hold for the data. Data model include a set of
operations for specifying retrievals & updates on the data base.

Types of data Models:

1) Relational Data Model: This type of model designs the data in the form of rows and
columns within a table. Thus, a relational model uses tables for representing data and in-
between relationships. Tables are also called relations. This model was initially described by
Edgar F. Codd, in 1969. The relational data model is the widely used model which is
primarily used by commercial data processing applications.

2) Entity-Relationship Data Model: An ER model is the logical representation of data as

objects and relationships among them. These objects are known as entities, and relationship is
an association among these entities. This model was designed by Peter Chen and published in
1976 papers. It was widely used in database designing. A set of attributes describe the
entities. For example, student_name, student_id describes the 'student' entity. A set of the
same type of entities is known as an 'Entity set', and the set of the same type of relationships
is known as 'relationship set'.

3) Object-based Data Model: An extension of the ER model with notions of functions,

encapsulation, and object identity, as well. This model supports a rich type system that
includes structured and collection types. Thus, in 1980s, various database systems following
the object-oriented approach were developed. Here, the objects are nothing but the data
carrying its properties.

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4) Semi structured Data Model: This type of data model is different from the other three
data models (explained above). The semistructured data model allows the data specifications
at places where the individual data items of the same type may have different attributes sets.
The Extensible Markup Language, also known as XML, is widely used for representing the
semistructured data. Although XML was initially designed for including the markup
information to the text document, it gains importance because of its application in the
exchange of data.

2.1.1 Importance of Data Modelling:

A data model helps design the data base at the conceptual, physical & logical levels. Data model
structure helps to define the relational tables, primary and foreign keys and stored procedures. It
provides a clear picture of the base data and can be used by data base developers to create a physical
database.

2.2 Database Design

Phases of Database Design:

The database design using high-level conceptual data models consists of different phases as
shown in the figure.2.1.

Figure 2.1 a simplified overview of the database design process

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Requirements collection and analysis

The database designers interview database users to understand and document their data
requirements. These requirements should be specified in as detailed and complete.

In parallel with specifying the data requirements, it is useful to specify the functional
requirements of the users.

Functional requirements consist of the user defined operations that will be applied to the
database, including both retrieval and updates.

Conceptual design

Once all the requirements have been collected and analysed, the next step is to create a
conceptual schema for the database using high level conceptual data model. This step is
called conceptual design.

Conceptual schema includes detailed description of the entity types, relationships and
constraints.

Logical design

After the conceptual design, the next step in database design is the actual implementation of
the database, using a commercial DBMS.

The conceptual schema is transformed from the high-level data model into the
implementation data model using DBMS.

This step is called logical design or data model mapping; its result is a database schema in the
implementation data model of the DBMS.

Physical Design

The last step is the physical design phase, during which the internal storage structures, file
organizations, indexes, access paths, and physical design parameters for the database files are
specified.

In parallel with these activities, application programs are designed and implemented as
database transactions.

2.3 ER-Model

ER Model is used to model the conceptual view of the system from data perspective.

which consists of these components:

1. Entities

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2. Attributes
3. Relationships

The ER model describes data as entities, relationships, and attributes.

ER diagrams: The schema for database application can be displayed by means of the
graphical notation known as ER diagrams.

Entity, Entity Type, Entity Set –

The basic object that the ER model represents is an entity, which is a thing in the real world
with an independent existence. An entity may be an object with a physical existence (for
example, EMPLOYEE entity, STUDENT entity and etc).

An entity type defines a collection (or set) of entities that have the same attributes. Each
entity type in the database is described by its name and attributes.

Example: EMPLOYEE Entity type with Name, age, salary so on attributes.

The collection of all entities of a particular entity type in the database at any point in time is
called an entity set; the entity set is usually referred to using the same name as the entity
type.

For example, EMPLOYEE refers to both a type of entity as well as the current set of all
employee entities in the database.

FIGURE 2.2 Two entity types, EMPLOYEE and COMPANY, and some member entities of each.

Weak Entity:
An entity that cannot be uniquely identified by its own attributes and relies on the
relationship with other entity is called weak entity. The weak entity is represented by a
double rectangle. For example – a bank account cannot be uniquely identified without
knowing the bank to which the account belongs, so bank account is a weak entity.

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Attributes: The properties that describes an entity is called attribute; each entity has attributes.
For example, an EMPLOYEE entity may be described by the employee‘s name, age, address,
salary, and job`.
Several types of attributes occur in the ER model:
1. Simple versus composite
2. Single valued versus multi-valued
3. Stored versus derived
4. Null Attribute
5. Complex attribute
 Composite versus Simple (Atomic) Attributes.
Attributes that are not divisible are called simple or atomic attributes.
Example: Age of EMPLOYEE Entity.
Composite attributes can be divided into smaller subparts, which represent more basic
attributes with independent meanings.

For example, The Name attribute of the EMPLOYEE entity can be divided into FirstName,
Middle Name and LastName.

The Address attribute of the EMPLOYEE entity can be subdivided into Street_address, City,
State, and Pin code.

 Single-Valued versus Multivalued Attributes.

The attributes have a single value for a particular entity. Such attributes are called single-valued.
For example: Age is a single-valued attribute of a person

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The attributes can have set of values for the same entity is called multivalued attribute .

For example : College_degrees attribute for a person.

One person may not have a college degree, another person may have one, and a third person
may have two or more degrees; therefore, different people can have different numbers of values
for the College_degrees attribute. Such attributes are called multivalued attribute.

 Stored versus Derived Attributes

For an EMPLOYEE entity, the value of Age can be determined from the current (today’s) date
and the value of that person‘s Birth_date attribute.
The Age attribute is hence called a derived attribute and is said to be derivable from the
Birth_date attribute, which is called a stored attribute.

 NULL Attribute
The Attribute may not have an applicable value for it.
For example, Email attribute, some people may have email id. For those who do not have email
id, then the value will be NULL for an Email attribute.

 Complex Attribute
Those attributes, which can be formed by the nesting of composite and multi-valued attributes,
are called “Complex Attributes “.
Example: Address because address contain composite value like street, city, state, PIN code and
also multivalued because one people has more that one house address.

 Key Attribute
The attribute which uniquely identifies each entity in the entity set is called key attribute.
For example, Roll_No will be unique for each student. In ER diagram, key attribute is
represented by an oval with underlying lines.

Relationship
A relationship is represented by diamond shape in ER diagram, it shows the
relationship among entities.

There are four types of relationships based on Cardinality ratio:

The cardinality ratio for a binary relationship specifies the maximum number of relationship
instances that an entity can participate in

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1. One to One(1:1)
2. One to Many(1:M)
3. Many to One(M:1)
4. Many to Many(M:M)

1. One to One Relationship

When a single instance of an entity is associated with a single instance of another entity then
it is called one to one relationship. For example, a person has only one passport and a
passport is given to one person.

2. One to Many Relationship

When a single instance of an entity is associated with more than one instances of another
entity then it is called one to many relationship. For example – a customer can place many
orders but a order cannot be placed by many customers.

3. Many to One Relationship

When more than one instances of an entity is associated with a single instance of another
entity then it is called many to one relationship. For example – many students can study in a
single college but a student cannot study in many colleges at the same time.

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4. Many to Many Relationship

When more than one instances of an entity is associated with more than one instances of
another entity then it is called many to many relationships. For example, a student can be
assigned to many projects and a project can be assigned to many students.

Relationship Types, Sets, and Instances

A relationship type R among n entity types E1, E2, ..., En . Defines a set of associations among
entities from these entity types
Relationship instance (ri )
• Each ri associates n individual entities (e1 , e2 , ..., en )
• Each entity ej in ri is a member of entity set Ej
• Relationships uniquely identified by keys of participating entities

Participation Constraints
The participation constraint specifies whether the existence of an entity depends on its being
related to another entity via the relationship type.
There are two types of participation constraints
1. Total Participation or existence dependency
2. Partial Participation

Total Participation: If every entity participates in at least one relationship instance in R.

Example: Every employee must work for a department, and then an employee entity can exist
only if it participates in at least one WORKS_FOR relationship instance.
Thus, the participation of EMPLOYEE in WORKS_FOR is called total participation
Total participation is also called existence dependency.

Partial Participation—if some entities in Entity participate in relationship R is called partial

participation.
Example: Not all employee manages the department, so the participation of EMPLOYEE in the
MANAGES relationship type is partial.

Identifying Relationship:
The relationship type that relates a weak entity type to its owner is called the identifying
relationship of the weak entity type.

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Symbols used for Designing ER-Diagrams:

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Examples:

Company Database ER-Diagram:

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