MIS 340: Data Modeling 1

Yong Choi School of Business CSUB

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Study Objectives

Understand concepts of a conceptual model 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

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Basic Modeling Concepts

A model is a representation of reality.

most system models are pictorial representations of reality.

Models can be built for existing systems as a way to better understand the systems Or for proposed systems as a way to document business requirements or technical designs.

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Conceptual data modeling

The conceptual data modeling revolves around discovering and analyzing organizational and users data requirements (see the supplement).

What data is important What data should be maintained

The major activity of this phase is identifying entities, attributes, and their relationships to construct ERD (Entity Relationship Diagram).

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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

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Entity Relationship diagram (ERD)

Data modeling methodology Developed by Peter Chen (1976).

See his original ERD article 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.

ERD is commonly used to:

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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)

ERD using Chen Notation (first original)

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Chens Notation

Entities

rectangle containing the entitys name. oval containing the attributes name. diamond containing the relationships name.

Attributes

Relationships

ER model using IE Notation (most popular)

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Steps for creating an ERD

1. 2. 3.

Identify entities Identify attributes Identify relationships

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Entity
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 A user of the database system An output of the database system (e.g. a report)

What should NOT be an Entity:

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Entity (cont)
Inappropriate entities System user

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System output

Appropriate entities

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Entity Instance

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Entity instance: a single occurrence of an entity.

6 instances

Entity: student

Student Last ID Name 2144 3122 3843 Arnold Taylor Macy Leath Wrench

First Name Betty John Bill Heather Tim

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Simmons Lisa

instance

9844 2837 2293

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Entity Instance (cont)

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Attributes
describe property or characteristic of an entity Entity: Employee Attributes:

Employee-Name Address (composite) Phone Extension Date-Of-Hire Job-Skill-Code Salary

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Classes of attributes

Simple attribute Composite attribute Derived attributes Single-valued attribute Multi-valued attribute

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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

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Derived attribute

is 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)

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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

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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

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Example - Movie Database

Entity:

Movie Star SS#: 123-45-6789 (single-valued) Cell Phone: (661)123-4567, (661)234-5678 (multivalued) Name: Harrison Ford (composite) Address: 123 Main Str., LA, CA (composite) Birthdate: 1-1-50 (simple) Age: 50 (derived)

Attributes:

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How to find entities?

Entity:

A fundamental THING of relevance to the enterprise about which data may be kept: things acted on by business activities people, places, objects, events. Tangible: customer, product intangible (active/conceptual): equipment breakdown look for nouns (beginner) BUT a proper noun is not a good candidate.

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How to find attributes?

Attribute:

property or characteristic of an entity A descriptor whose values are associated with individual entities of a specific entity type look for attribute descriptions/entity properties (beginner)

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(unique) Identifier
attributes that uniquely identify entity instances Uniquely identify every instance of the entity One or more of the entitys attributes

Composite identifiers are identifiers that consist of two or more attributes

Identifiers are represented by underlying the name of the attribute(s) Employee (employee_ID), student (student_ID)

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