ENTITY RELATIONSHIP

MODELING
BCA20
Engr. Florence B. Reyes
STUDY OBJECTIVES
 Understand concepts of data modeling
and its purpose
 Learn how relationships between entities
are defined and refined, and how such
relationships are incorporated into the
database design process
 Learn how ERD components affect
database design and implementation
 Learn how to interpret the modeling
symbols
WHY DATA MODELING?
 Represent “reality” of the actual database
 Blue print: documentation
 Effective Communication Tool
 User involvement
 Represent abstraction of requirements
 Identify the business rules to be stored in
the database
 Independence from a particular DBMS
CONCEPTUAL DATA MODELING
 The conceptual data modeling revolves
around discovering and analyzing
organizational and users data
requirements.
 What data is important
 What data should be maintained
 The major activity of this phase is
identifying entities, attributes, and
their relationships to construct model
using the Entity Relationship Diagram
methodology.
DEFINITIONS

 Entity Relationship Modelling (ERM)

 A technique used to analyze & model the data in
organizations using an Entity Relationship (E-R)
diagram.
 Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD)
 Data modeling methodology
 A detailed, logical representation of the entities,
associations and data elements for an organization
or business.
DEFINITIONS

 Entity
 A person, place, object, event or concept in the user
environment about which the organization wishes
to maintain data
 Entity Type
 A collection of entities that share common
properties or characteristics
 Attribute
 A named property or characteristic of an entity that
is of interest to an organization
DEFINITIONS
 Relationship
 an association between two or more entities
that is of particular interest
 Relationship Types
 While entity types are the nouns of a data
model, relationships are the verbs that connect
those nouns.
 A set of meaningful associations among entity
types.
BACKGROUND
 Developed by Peter Chen in 1976
 ERD is commonly used to:
 Translate different views of data among
managers, users, and programmers to fit into
a common framework.
 Define data processing and constraint
requirements to help us meet the different
views.
 Help implement the database.
WHY USE ER DIAGRAM ?
 Itprovides a global quick reference to an
organization’s data structures.
 Can be used individually to design an
Information System’s (IS) data structure
 Can be used with Data Flow Diagrams to
provide a more comprehensive IS logical
design.
BASIC ERD ELEMENTS
 Entity: a collection of people, places,
objects, events, concepts of interest (a
table)
 Entity instance – a member of the Entity : a
person, a place, an object … (a row in a table)
 Attribute - property or characteristic of
interest of an entity (a field in a table)
 Relationship – association between
entities (corresponds to primary key-
foreign key equivalencies in related
tables)
IDENTIFY THE ENTITIES
“A fundamental THING of relevance to the
enterprise about which data may be kept”
 What should be an Entity: both tangible &
intangible
 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
 What should NOT be an Entity:
 A user of the database system
 An output of the database system (e.g. a report)
IDENTIFY THE ENTITIES
Any entity can be classified in one of the
following categories:
 Regular Entity:
 any physical object, event, or abstract concept
that we can record facts about.
 Weak Entity:
 any entity that depends on another entity for
its existence.
ERD USING IE NOTATION (MOST
POPULAR)
 ENTITY INSTANCE
Entity instance: a single occurrence of an entity.
 6 instances

Entity: student Student Last First

ID Name Name
2144 Arnold Betty
3122 Taylor John
3843 Simmons Lisa
instance
9844 Macy Bill
2837 Leath Heather
2293 Wrench Tim
ENTITY INSTANCE

15
DETERMINE THE ATTRIBUTES
 Every Entity has attributes.
 Attributes are characteristics that allow
us to classify/describe an entity
 e.g., entity STUDENT has the attributes:
 student number
 name

 date of birth

 course number
CLASSES OF ATTRIBUTES
 Simple attribute
 Composite attribute
 Derived attributes
 Single-valued attribute
 Multi-valued attribute
SIMPLE/COMPOSITE ATTRIBUTE
A simple attribute cannot be subdivided.
 Examples: Age, Gender, and Marital status
A composite attribute can be further
subdivided to yield additional attributes.
 Examples:
 ADDRESS -- Street, City, State, Zip
 PHONE NUMBER -- Area code, Exchange number
DERIVED ATTRIBUTE
 Itis not physically stored within the
database
 Instead, it is derived by using an
algorithm.
 Example: AGE can be derived from the date of
birth and the current date.
 MS Access: int(Date() – Emp_Dob)/365)
SINGLE-VALUED ATTRIBUTE
 Can have only a single (atomic) value.
 Examples:
 A person can have only one social security number.
 A manufactured part can have only one serial

number.
 A single-valued attribute is not
necessarily a simple attribute.
 Part No: CA-08-02-189935
 Location: CA, Factory#:08, shift#: 02, part#: 189935
MULTI-VALUED ATTRIBUTES
 Can have many values.
 Examples:
 A person may have several college degrees.
 A household may have several phones with different

numbers
 A car color
EXAMPLE - “MOVIE DATABASE”
 Entity:
 Movie Star
 Attributes:
 SS#: “123-45-6789” (single-valued)
 Cell Phone: “(661)123-4567, (661)234-5678” (multi-
valued)
 Name: “Harrison Ford” (composite)
 Address: “123 Main Str., LA, CA” (composite)
 Birthdate: “1-1-50” (simple)
 Age: 50 (derived)
KEY ATTRIBUTES
 Certainattributes identify particular facts
within an entity, these are known as KEY
attributes.

 The different types of KEY attribute are:

 Primary Key
 Composite Primary Key
 Foreign Key
KEY DEFINITIONS
 Primary Key:
 One attribute whose value can uniquely
identify a complete record (one row of data)
within an entity.
 Composite Primary Key
 A primary key that consists of two or more
attribute within an entity.
 Foreign Key
 A copy of a primary key that exists in another
entity for the purpose of forming a relationship
between the entities involved.
Notation Guide
 ENTITY TYPE
 rectangle containing the
entity’s name.
 WEAK ENTITY TYPE

 RELATIONSHIP TYPE
 diamond containing the
relationship’s name
 IDENTIFYING
RELATIONSHIP TYPE
… Notation Guide
 ATTRIBUTE
 oval containing the attribute’s
name.
_____
 KEY ATTRIBUTE

 MULTIVALUED ATTRIBUTE

 DERIVED ATTRIBUTE

...  COMPOSITE ATTRIBUTE

A Sample ER Diagram
Entity
Entity
sname

Store Locations
Relationship
manager

qty Keeps
Attributes
pname

Product price

descrip
 DEGREES OF A RELATIONSHIP
One-to-one (1:1)
1 1
Man Woman

One-to-many (1:n)
1 M
Customer Order

Many-to-many (n:m)
M M
Course Subject

NOTE: Every many to many relationship consists of two one to

many relationships working in opposite directions
 DEGREES OF RELATIONSHIP, ALTERNATIVE
REPRESENTATION

One-to-one (1:1)

Man Woman

One-to-many (1:n)

Customer Order

Many-to-many (n:m)

Course Subject

NOTE: Every many to many relationship consists of two one to

many relationships working in opposite directions
NOTATION FOR MANDATORY/OPTIONAL
ATTRIBUTES

1 M
Person Car

A person must own at least one car. A car

doesn’t have to be owned by a person, but if
it is, it is owned 1by at least one person. A
person may own many cars.

optional relationship mandatory relationship

RECURSIVE RELATIONSHIPS

emp-name

emp-id
manager
employee works-for
worker
emp-street

emp-city

Must be declared with roles

WEAK ENTITY SETS
Still need to be able to distinguish between different
weak entities associated with the same strong entity
number trans-date

trans-number

account has Transaction

trans-type

balance trans-amt
A Sample ER Diagram
TRY THIS! (ASSIGNMENT: DUE 12/6/17)
Draw an ER Diagram of the situation
stated on the next slide. Take note of the
key attributes, degrees of relationships,
and mandatory/optional relationships.
Use ½ crosswise yellow paper for your
illustration.
TRY THIS! (ASSIGNMENT: DUE 12/6/17)
 STUDENTs attend COURSEs that consist of
many SUBJECTs.
 A single SUBJECT (i.e. English) can be studied
in many different COURSEs.
 Each STUDENT may only attend one COURSE.

 STUDENT can be characterized by StudID,

StudName, StudCourse.
 COURSE can be characterized by CCode and
CDescription
 SUBJECT can be characterized by SCode, and
SDescription
TRY THIS! (ASSIGNMENT: DUE 12/6/17)
Grading:
 Entities correctly identified and illustrated: 5

 Attributes correctly identified and illustrated: 5

 Relationships correctly identified and illustrated: 5

 Primary keys, degrees, mandatory/optional

relationships correctly identified and illustrated: 5