Entity-Relationship Modeling

COMP313 – Database Management System

 a technique used to analyze & model
the data in organizations using an
Entity Relationship (E-R) diagram.

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E-R MODEL

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 Widely used conceptual level data
model
 proposed by Peter P. Chen in 1970s
 A database can be modeled as:
 a collection of entities,
 relationship among entities.

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CONCEPTS OF E-R MODEL

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 Entity types
 Attributes

 Relationship types

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ENTITY TYPE

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 Entity

 An object that exists and is

distinguishable from other objects.
 Examples: specific person, company, event,
plant
 An instance of an entity is an object in
the class represented by the entity
 Examples: Course and Room are entities.
Their instances are particular courses (eg
CSC340F) and rooms (eg MS2172)

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 Entity Type

 Sometimes called Entity Set

 Collection of entities all having the
same properties.
 Examples:
• Student entity set – collection of all student
entities.
• Course entity set – collection of all course entities.

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ATTRIBUTES

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 Attributes

 Entities have attributes

 Each entity is described by a set of
attributes/properties.
 Examples:
• Student entity
– StudName – name of the student.
– RollNumber – the roll number of the student.
– Sex – the gender of the student etc.
• All entities in an Entity set/type have the same set
of attributes.

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 Types of Attributes

 Simple Attributes
 having atomic or indivisible values.
 examples:
• Dept – a string
• PhoneNumber – an eight digit number

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 Types of Attributes

 Composite Attributes
 having several components in the value.
 example:
• Qualification with components (DegreeName,
Year, UniversityName)

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 Types of Attributes

 Derived Attributes
 Attribute value is dependent on some other
attribute.
 example:
• Age depends on DateOfBirth. So age is a derived
attribute.

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 Types of Attributes

 Single-valued
 having only one value rather than a set of
values.
 Example:
• PlaceOfBirth – single string value.

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 Types of Attributes

 Multi-valued
 having a set of values rather than a single
value.
 Examples:
• CoursesEnrolled attribute for student
• EmailAddress attribute for student
• PreviousDegree attribute for student.

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 Types of Attributes

 Attributes can be:

 simple single-valued, simple multi-valued,
 composite single-valued or composite multi-
valued.

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 Diagrammatic Notation for Entities

 entity
 rectangle
 attribute
 ellipse connected to rectangle
 multi-valued attribute
 double ellipse
 composite attribute
 ellipse connected to ellipse
 derived attribute
 dashed ellipse
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Diagrammatic Notation for Entities

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 Key Attributes

 Key
 an attribute or a collection of attributes whose
value(s) uniquely identify an entity in the entity
set.
 Examples:
• RollNumber - Key for Student entity set
• EmpID - Key for Faculty entity set
• HostelName, RoomNo - Key for Student entity set
(assuming that each student gets to stay in a
single room)

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 Key Attributes

 The different types of KEY attribute

are:
 Primary Key
• Composite Primary Key
 Foreign Key

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 Key Attributes

 Primary Key:
 One attribute whose value can uniquely
identify a complete record (one row of data)
within an entity.

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 Key Attributes

 Composite Primary Key

 A primary key that consists of two or more
attribute within an entity.
 When two or more columns are used as a
primary key, they are called a composite key. 

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 Key Attributes

 Foreign Key
 A copy of a primary key that exists in another
entity for the purpose of forming a relationship
between the entities involved.

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 Entity Categories

 Strong Entity Type

 Entity type that is not existence-
dependent on some other entity type.

 Weak Entity Type

 any entity that depends on another
entity for its existence.

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 Entity Categories

 Strong Entity Type

 Entity type that is not existence-
dependent on some other entity type.

 Weak Entity Type

 any entity that depends on another
entity for its existence.

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Examples:

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 Relationships

 When two or more entities are

associated with each other, we have
an instance of a Relationship.
 Example:
 Student Ramesh enrolls in Discrete
Mathematics course
 Relationship enrolls has Student and Course
as the participating entity sets.

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Examples:

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 Degree of Relationship

 Set of meaningful associations among

entity types.
 Degree of a Relationship
 Number of participating entities in
relationship.
 Relationship of degree
 two is binary
 three is ternary
 four is quaternary.

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 Degree of Relationship

 Binary Relationship

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 Degree of Relationship

 Ternary Relationship

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 Degree of Relationship

 Quaternary Relationship

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 Binary Relationships and Cardinality Ratio

 The most common degree for

relationships is binary.

 The number of entities from E2 that

an entity from E1 can possibly be
associated thru R (and vice-versa)
determines the cardinality ratio of R.

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 Binary Relationships and Cardinality Ratio

 Cardinality
 Describes maximum number of possible
relationship occurrences for an entity
participating in a given relationship type.
 Four possibilities are usually
specified:
 one-to-one (1:1)
 one-to-many (1:N)
 many-to-one (N:1)
 many-to-many (M:N)

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 Binary Relationships and Cardinality Ratio

 one-to-one (1:1)

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 Binary Relationships and Cardinality Ratio

 one-to-many (1:N) / many-to-one

(N:1)

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Binary Relationships and Cardinality Ratio

 many-to-many (N:M)

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 ERD Development Process

 Identify the entities

 Determine the attributes for each
entity
 Select the primary key for each entity
 Establish the relationships between
the entities
 Draw an entity model
 Test the relationships and the keys

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 ERD Development Process –Example

In an educational institute, there are several

departments and students belong to one of them. Each
department has a unique department number, a name, a
location, phone number and is headed by a professor.
Professors have a unique employee Id, name, phone
number.

We like to keep track of the following details regarding

students: name, unique roll number, sex, phone number,
date of birth, age and one or more email addresses.
Students have a local address consisting of the hostel name
and the room number. They also have home address
consisting of house number, street, city and PIN. It is
assumed that all students reside in the hostels.

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 ERD Development Process – Example

A course taught in a semester of the year is called a

section. There can be several sections of the same course
in a semester; these are identified by the section number.

Each section is taught by a different professor and has

its own timings and a room to meet. Students enroll for
several sections in a semester. Each course has a name,
number of credits and the department that offers it. A
course may have other courses as pre-requisites i.e,
courses to be completed before it can be enrolled in.

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 ERD Development Process – Example

Professors also undertake research projects. These are

sponsored by funding agencies and have a specific start
date, end date and amount of money given. More than one
professor can be involved in a project. Also a professor may
be simultaneously working on several projects. A project
has a unique projectId.

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 Identify the entities

 Student
 Department
 Course
 Professor
 Project
 Section

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 Determine the attributes for each entity
and Select the primary key for each entity

 Student

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 Determine the attributes for each entity
and Select the primary key for each entity

 Department and Course

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 Determine the attributes for each entity
and Select the primary key for each entity

 Professor, Project and Sections

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Establish the relationships between the
entities and Draw an entity model

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Thank you…

END OF PRESENTATION

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 Conference centre booking system

The centre contains a number of facilities which may be required by clients making
bookings as follows:
A. There are 400 bedrooms for clients who will be resident during the Course or
conference.
B. A maximum of 250 catered people can be handled at any one time.
C. Six main lecture theatres providing seating for 200 people.
D. Twenty seminar rooms each able to accommodate 25 people.
E. Video conference facilities. The video conference facilities consist of four separate
Video conference networks. Each video conference network has a large screen based
in one of the main lecture theatres, along with 3 satellite screens each of which is
based in one of the seminar rooms.

Draw an entity relationship diagram for the case, stating any assumptions you deem
necessary.

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