Chapter 3:

Modeling Data in the

Organization

Modern Database
Management
9th Edition
Jeffrey A. Hoffer, Mary B. Prescott,
Heikki Topi

© 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall 1

 Objectives
 Definition of terms
 Importance of data modeling
 Write good names and definitions for entities,
relationships, and attributes
 Distinguish unary, binary, and ternary relationships
 Model different types of attributes, entities,
relationships, and cardinalities
 Draw E-R diagrams for common business situations
 Convert many-to-many relationships to associative
entities
 Model time-dependent data using time stamps

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 Business Rules
 Statements that define or constrain
some aspect of the business
 Assert business structure
 Control/influence business behavior
 Expressed in terms familiar to end
users
 Automated through DBMS software
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 A Good Business Rule Is:
 Declarative–what, not how
 Precise–clear, agreed-upon meaning
 Atomic–one statement
 Consistent–internally and externally
 Expressible–structured, natural
language
 Distinct–non-redundant
 Business-oriented–understood by
business people
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 A Good Data Name Is:
 Related to business, not technical,
characteristics
 Meaningful and self-documenting
 Unique
 Readable
 Composed of words from an approved list
 Repeatable
 Follows standard syntax

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 Data Definitions
 Explanation of a term or fact
 Term–word or phrase with specific meaning
 Fact–association between two or more terms
 Guidelines for good data definition
 Gathered in conjunction with systems
requirements
 Accompanied by diagrams
 Concise description of essential data meaning
 Achieved by consensus, and iteratively refined

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 E-R Model Constructs
 Entities:
 Entity instance–person, place, object, event, concept (often
corresponds to a row in a table)
 Entity Type–collection of entities (often corresponds to a
table)

 Relationships:
 Relationship instance–link between entities (corresponds to
primary key-foreign key equivalencies in related tables)
 Relationship type–category of relationship…link between
entity types

 Attribute–property or characteristic of an entity or

relationship type (often corresponds to a field in a table)

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 Sample E-R Diagram (Figure 3-1)

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Basic E-R notation (Figure 3-2)

Entity Attribute
symbols symbols

A special entity
that is also a Relationship
relationship symbols

Relationship
degrees specify
number of
entity types Relationship
involved cardinalities
specify how
many of each
entity type is
allowed
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 What Should an Entity Be?
 SHOULD BE:
 An object that will have many
instances in the database
 An object that will be composed of
multiple attributes
 An object that we are trying to model
 SHOULD NOT BE:
 A user of the database system
 An output of the database system
(e.g., a report)
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Figure 3-4 Example of inappropriate entities

System System
user Inappropriate output
entities

Appropriate
entities

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 Attributes
 Attribute–property or characteristic
of an entity or relationship type
 Classifications of attributes:
 Required versus Optional Attributes
 Simple versus Composite Attribute
 Single-Valued versus Multivalued
Attribute
 Stored versus Derived Attributes
 Identifier Attributes

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 Identifiers (Keys)
 Identifier (Key)–an attribute (or
combination of attributes) that
uniquely identifies individual
instances of an entity type
 Simple versus Composite Identifier
 Candidate Identifier–an attribute that
could be a key…satisfies the
requirements for being an identifier

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Characteristics of Identifiers
 Will not change in value
 Will not be null
 No intelligent identifiers (e.g.,
containing locations or people that
might change)
 Substitute new, simple keys for long,
composite keys

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 Figure 3-7 A composite attribute

An attribute
broken into
component parts

Figure 3-8 Entity with multivalued attribute (Skill)

and derived attribute (Years_Employed)

Multivalued
an employee can have Derived
more than one skill from date
employed
and current
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 Figure 3-9 Simple and composite identifier attributes

The identifier is boldfaced and underlined

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 Figure 3-19 Simple example of time-stamping

This attribute
is both
multivalued
and
composite
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 More on Relationships
 Relationship Types vs. Relationship Instances
 The relationship type is modeled as lines between
entity types…the instance is between specific
entity instances
 Relationships can have attributes
 These describe features pertaining to the association
between the entities in the relationship
 Two entities can have more than one type of
relationship between them (multiple
relationships)
 Associative Entity–combination of
relationship and entity

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Figure 3-10 Relationship types and instances

a) Relationship type

b)
Relationship
instances

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 Degree of Relationships
 Degree of a relationship is
the number of entity types
that participate in it
 Unary Relationship
 Binary Relationship

 Ternary Relationship

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 Degree of relationships – from Figure 3-2

Entities of
One entity two different
related to types related
another of to each other Entities of three
the same different types
entity type related to each
other
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 Cardinality of Relationships
 One-to-One
 Each entity in the relationship will have exactly
one related entity
 One-to-Many
 An entity on one side of the relationship can
have many related entities, but an entity on
the other side will have a maximum of one
related entity
 Many-to-Many
 Entities on both sides of the relationship can
have many related entities on the other side
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 Cardinality Constraints
 Cardinality Constraints—the number of
instances of one entity that can or must
be associated with each instance of
another entity
 Minimum Cardinality
 If zero, then optional
 If one or more, then mandatory
 Maximum Cardinality
 The maximum number

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Figure 3-12 Examples of relationships of different degrees

a) Unary relationships

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Figure 3-12 Examples of relationships of different degrees (cont.)

b) Binary relationships

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Figure 3-12 Examples of relationships of different degrees (cont.)

c) Ternary relationship

Note: a relationship can have attributes of its own

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Figure 3-17 Examples of cardinality constraints

a) Mandatory cardinalities

A patient history is A patient must have

recorded for one and recorded at least one
only one patient history, and can have
many

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Figure 3-17 Examples of cardinality constraints (cont.)

b) One optional, one mandatory

A project must be An employee can be

assigned to at least assigned to any number
one employee, and of projects, or may not be
may be assigned to assigned to any at all
many

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Figure 3-17 Examples of cardinality constraints (cont.)

c) Optional cardinalities

A person is
married to at
most one other
person, or may
not be married
at all

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Figure 3-21 Examples of multiple relationships

a) Employees and departments

Entities can be related to one another in more than one way

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Figure 3-21 Examples of multiple relationships (cont.)

b) Professors and courses (fixed lower limit constraint)

Here, min
cardinality
constraint is 2

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gure 3-15a and 3-15b Multivalued attributes can be represented as relationships

simple

composite

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 Strong vs. Weak Entities, and
Identifying Relationships
 Strong entities
 exist independently of other types of entities
 has its own unique identifier
 identifier underlined with single line
 Weak entity
 dependent on a strong entity (identifying owner)…cannot exist on its
own
 does not have a unique identifier (only a partial identifier)
 partial identifier underlined with double line
 entity box has double line
 Identifying relationship
 links strong entities to weak entities

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 Identifying relationship (Figure 3-5)

Strong entity Weak entity

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 Associative Entities

An entity–has attributes

A relationship–links entities together
 When should a relationship with attributes instead be
an associative entity?
 All relationships for the associative entity should be many
 The associative entity could have meaning independent of the
other entities
 The associative entity preferably has a unique identifier, and
should also have other attributes
 The associative entity may participate in other relationships
other than the entities of the associated relationship
 Ternary relationships should be converted to associative
entities

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Figure 3-11a A binary relationship with an attribute

Here, the date completed attribute pertains specifically to the

employee’s completion of a course…it is an attribute of the
relationship

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Figure 3-11b An associative entity (CERTIFICATE)

Associative entity is like a relationship with an attribute, but it is

also considered to be an entity in its own right

Note that the many-to-many cardinality between entities in

Figure 3-11a has been replaced by two one-to-many relationships
with the associative entity
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Figure 3-13c An associative entity – bill of materials structur

This could just be a relationship with

attributes…it’s a judgment call

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Figure 3-18 Ternary relationship as an associative entity

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 Microsoft Visio
Notation for Pine
Valley Furniture
E-R diagram

(Figure 3-22)

Different modeling
software tools may
have different
notation for the same
constructs

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 A laboratory has several chemists who work on one or more
projects. Chemists also may use certain kinds of equipment
on each project. Attributes of CHEMIST include Employee ID
(identifier), Name, and Phone No. Attributes of PROJECT
include Project ID (identifier) and Start Date. Attributes of
EQUIPMENT include Serial No and Cost. The organization
wishes to record Assign Date—that is, the date when a given
equipment item was assigned to a particular chemist working
on a specified project. A chemist must be assigned to at least
one project and one equipment item. A given equipment item
need not be assigned, and a given project need not be
assigned either a chemist or an equipment item. Provide
good definitions for all of the relationships in this situation.

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Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice

Hall

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