What is a Database Management System?

Spring 2008

Lecture slides by Dr. Sara Cohen

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What and Why

A database management system is a program used to:
Store large amounts of data Allow easy access to the data (using a query language) Separate the physical schema from the logical schema

What and Why

Protect the data from corruption or security leaks Allow multiple users to access the data simultaneously Provide crash recovery And more

Entity-Relationship Diagrams
Spring 2008

Scenario
http://www.imdb.com wants to store information about movies and has chosen you to help them

Three steps:
Requirements Analysis: Discover what information needs to be stored, how the stored information will be used, etc. Taught in course on system analysis and design Conceptual Database Design: High level description of data to be stored (ER model) Logical Database Design: Translation of ER diagram to a relational database schema (description of tables) Physical Database Design: Done by the DB system
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Requirements (1)
For actors and directors, we want to store their name, a unique identification number, address and birthday (why not age?) For actors, we also want to store a photograph For films, we want to store the title, year of production and type (thriller, comedy, etc.)

We want to know who directed and who acted in each film. Every film has one director. We store the salary of each actor for each film
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Requirements (2)
An actor can receive an award for his part in a film. We store information about who got which award for which film, along with the name of the award and year. We also store the name and telephone number of the organization who gave the award. Two different organizations can give an award with the same name. A single organization does not give more than one award with a particular name per year.
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address birthday Movie Person name phone number name

id

Organization

Gives

In the rest of this lesson we explain this diagram picture Actor

salary
Acted In

ISA

Director Directed

Won
Award year name

year

Film title type

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ER-Diagrams: General Information

ER-diagrams are a formalism to model real-world scenarios There are many versions of ER-diagrams that differ both in their appearance and in their meaning We will use the version appearing in the course book (Database Management Systems by Ramakrishnan)

ER-diagrams have a formal semantics (meaning) that must be thoroughly understood, in order to create correct diagrams

Entities, Entity Sets

Entity (): An object in the world that can be distinguished from other objects
Examples of entities: Examples of things that are not entities:

Entity set () : A set of similar entities

Examples of entity sets: Entity sets are drawn as rectangles
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Attributes
Attributes (): Used to describe entities
All entities in the set have the same attributes A minimal set of attributes that uniquely identify

an entity is called a key

An attribute contains a single piece of information (and not a list of data)

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Attributes (2)
Examples of attributes: Examples of things that cannot be attributes: Attributes are drawn using ovals The names of the attributes which make up a key are underlined
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Example

id Actor name

birthday

address

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Another Option for a Key?

id Actor name

birthday

address

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Another Option for a Key?

id Actor name

birthday

address

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Relationships, Relationship Sets

Relationship (): Association among two or more entities
Relationships may have attributes
Examples of Relationships:

Relationship Set () : Set of similar relationships

Examples of Relationship sets: Relationship sets are drawn using diamonds

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Example
title birthday

id Actor name address type Acted In Film year

Where does the salary attribute belong?

salary
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Recursive Relationships
An entity set can participate more than once in a relationship In this case, we add a description of the role to the ERdiagram
phone number

manager

id Employee worker Manages

name
address
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n-ary Relationship
An n-ary relationship R set involves exactly n entity
sets: E1, , En. Each relationship in R involves exactly n entities: e1 in E1, , en in En Formally, R E1x x En
id Director name

id Actor name
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Produced

Film

title

Example
Suppose that there are:
Actors: Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck Directors: Big Bird, Kermit

Films: Mickeys Club

How many pairs can be in the relationship set Produced?
id

How many triplets can be in the relationship set Produced?

Director

name

id Actor name
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Produced

Film

title

Another Option: Remember Recursive Relationships

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Important Note
The entities in a relationship set must identify the relationship Attributes of the relationship set cannot be used for identification! Suppose we wanted to store the role of an actor in a film.
How should we store the role of the actor? How would we store information about a person who acted in one film in several roles?
id Actor name
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Acted In

Film

title

Key Constraints ()
Key constraints specify whether an entity can participate in one, or more than one, relationships in a relationship set

When there is no key constraint an entity can participate

any number of times When there is a key constraint, the entity can participate at

most one time

Key constraints are drawn using an arrow from the entity set to the relationship set

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One-to-Many
A film is directed by at most one director A director can direct any number of films
id Director name

Directed

Film

title

Director

Directed

Film

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Many-to-Many
A film is directed by any number of directors A director can direct any number of films
id Director name

Directed

Film

title

Director

Directed

Film

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One-to-One
A film is directed by at most one director A director can direct at most one film
id Director name

Directed

Film

title

Director

Directed

Film

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Another Example
Where would you put the arrow?

age
father id Person child FatherOf

name

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Key Constraints in Ternary Relationships

id

Actor

name

id

Director
name

produced

Film

title

What does this mean?

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Participation Constraints ))
Participation constraints specify whether or not an entity must participate in a relationship set

When there is no participation constraint, it is possible that an entity will not participate in a relationship set When there is a participation constraint, the entity must participate at least once
Participation constraints are drawn using a thick line from the entity set to the relationship set
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Example (1)
A film has at lease one director A director can direct any number of films
id Director name

Directed

Film

title

Do you think that there should be a participation constraint from Director to Directed?

Director

Directed

Film

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Example (2)
We can combine key and participation constraints.

What does this diagram mean?

id Director name Directed Film title

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Storing Award Information

What do you think of this?

org_ name Award phone number year name

Won

To model this correctly we need weak entity sets

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Weak Entity Sets

Weak entity sets are entity sets that are not uniquely identified by their attributes

A weak entity set has an "identifying

relationship" with an entity set that is the "identifying owner" of the weak entity set

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Weak Entity Sets

A weak entity set must:
participate fully in the identifying relationship ( a thick line) participate in a one to many relationship with the identifying owner ( an arrow) Weak entity sets have a thick rectangle, their keys are underlined with a broken line, and the identifying relationship has a thick diamond
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Example
name phone number

Organization

What would be the meaning if this was not a thick line?

year

Gives Won Award name

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Example

How are the entity sets ?identified

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Example
Suppose that you were storing information about books. Should books be modeled as a weak entity set or a regular entity set?
Does ISBN identify a book The answer: it depends what type of data you

are interested in storing!

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Copies of Books in Libraries

name Library Owned By author

id Person

title

Book isbn Copy Of

Borrowed

Copy condition
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copy number

ISA Hierarchies
ISA Relationships: Define a hierarchy between entity sets
ISA is similar to inheritance ISA relationships are drawn as a triangle with

the word ISA inside it. The "super entity-set" is

above the triangle and the "sub entity-sets" are below

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Example
What are the keys of:
address
birthday Movie Person name id

1. Movie Person
2. Actor 3. Director

ISA

picture

Actor

Director

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Overlap Constraints
Overlap constraints: Determine whether two sub-entity sets can contain the same entity
Example: Can an Actor be a Director?

Write "Actor OVERLAPS Director". If not

written, assume no overlap

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Covering Constraints
Covering constraints: Determine whether every entity in the super-entity set is also in at least one of the sub-entity sets
Example: Is every movie person either an Actor

or a Director?
Write "Actor AND Director COVER Movie Person". If not written, assume no covering

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Aggregation
Aggregation: Allows us to indicate that a relationship set participates in a relationship set Remember, we want to store information about Actors, Films and their award. We will

see why aggregation is needed for this

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Whats Wrong?
All the actors for all their participation in all the films must get an award!
Award

picture salary

Actor Acted In

year

Film title type

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Whats Wrong?
An actor may get an award for a film in which he has never acted in!
Won Award

picture salary

Actor Acted In

year

Film title type

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Suppose that there are: The Solution 3 actors 2 films 4 awards How many pairs can there be in ActedIn? How many pairs can there be in Won? Note that the pairs of Won are of a special type
picture Won Award salary Actor Acted In

year

Film title type

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Final Diagram
birthday name phone number

address

id
Movie Person name

Organization

ISA

Gives

picture

Actor Acted In

Director Directed

Won
Award year name

salary

year

Film title type

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References
Database Management Systems, by Raghu Ramakrishnan & Johannes Gehrke, third edition, McGraw-Hill, 2003. Chapters: 2

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Assignment #2
In the Ramakrishnan book, exercises 2.2 and 2.3 (Chapter 2). page 52.: Exercise 2.2:
A university DB contains information about professors (identified by social security number, or SSN) and courses (identified by courseid). Professors teach courses; each of the following situations concerns the Teachers relationship set. For each situation, draw an ER diagram that describes it (assuming no further constraints hold).
Professors can teach the same course in several semesters, and each ofering must be recorded.

Professors can teach the same course in several semesters, and only the most recent such offering needs to be recorded. (Assume this condition applies in all subsequent questions.)
Every professor must teach some course. Every professor teaches exactly one course. Every professor teaches exactly one course, and every course must be taught by some professor.

Now suppose that certain courses can be taught by a team of professors jointly, but it is possible that no one professor in a team can teach the course.

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Assignment #2
Exercise 2.3:
Design and draw ER diagram capturing all the following constraints regarding an university DB:
Professors have an SSN, a name, an age, a rank, and a research specialty.
Projects have a project number, a sponsor name, a starting date, an ending date, and a budget. Graduate students have an SSN, a name, an age, and a degree program (M.S. or Ph.D.)

Each project is managed by one professor (known as the projects principal investigator).
Each project is worked on by one or more professors (known as the projects coinvestigators). Professors can manage and/or work on multiple projects.

Each project is worked on by one or more graduate students (the projects research assistants).

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Assignment #2
Exercise 2.3 cont.:
When grad. students work on a project, a professor must supervise their work on the project. Grad. Students may work on many projects (in this case they may have more than one supervisor). Departments have a department number, name, and a main office. Departments have a professor, who runs the department. Professors work in one or more departments, and for each department that they work in, a time percentage is associated with their job. Grad. students have one major department in which they are working on their degree. Each grad. Student has another, more senior grad. student (a student advisor) who advises him/her on what courses to take.

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