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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND INFORMATION SYSTEM

DEPARTMENT

DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

EXERCISE

3
DATA MODELING USING ENHANCED E-R

AQUINO, MARK ANTHONY BS IT 201

NAME SECTION
October 15, 2020 October 16, 2020
DATE PERFORMED DATE FINISHED

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I. OBJECTIVES

At the end of this exercise, students must be able to:

1. Identify the hierarchical relationships of entities based on a set of
information requirements
2. Design an Enhanced ER Diagram

II. BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Enhanced Entity-Relationship Model
The Enhanced Entity-Relationship model is the extension of the original
ER model with new modeling constructs. The new modeling constructs
introduced in the EER model are supertype/subtype relationships.
Enhanced ER model = ER model + hierarchical relationships
Supertype and Subtype
Supertype is a generic entity type that has a relationship with one or more
subtypes.
A subtype is a subgrouping of the entities in an entity type that is
meaningful to the organization. Subtypes inherit the attributes and relationships
associated with their supertype.
Consider the entity type STUDENT (supertype), which has two subtypes
UNDERGRADUATE and POSTGRADUATE.
Generalization and Specialization
Generalization is the process of minimizing the differences between
entities by identifying common features. It can also be defined as the process of
defining a generalized entity type from a set of entity types.
Specialization is the process of identifying subsets of an entity set (the
superset) that share some distinguishing characteristics. In specialization the
supertype is defined first and the subtypes are defined next.

Figure 3.1 Generalization and Specialization

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Constraints on Specialization and Generalization

1. Disjointness constraint allows us to specify whether an instance of a

supertype may simultaneously be a member of two or more subtypes.
a. Overlap refers to the fact that the same entity instance may be a
member of more than one subtype of the specialization.
b. Disjoint refers to the fact that the same entity instance may be a
member of only one subtype of the specialization.

2. Completeness constraint addresses the question whether an instance of a

supertype must also be a member of at least one subtype.
a. Total completeness refers to the fact that every entity instance in the
supertype must be a member of some subtype in the specialization.
b. Partial completeness refers to the fact that an entity instance in the
supertype need not be a member of any subtype in the specialization.

III. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE

Prepare an Enhanced E-R diagram for an online auction database system in which
members (buyers and sellers) participate in the sale of items. The data requirements
for this system are summarized as follows:

 The online site has members who are identified by a unique member id and
are described by an email address, their name, a password, their home
address, and a phone number.
 A member may be a buyer or a seller. A buyer has a shipping address
recorded in the database. A seller has a bank account number and routing
number recorded in the database.
 Items are placed by a seller for sale and are identified by a unique item
number assigned by the system. Items are also described by an item title, an
item description, a starting bid price, bidding increment, the start date of the
auction, and the end date of the auction.
 Items are also categorized based on a fixed classification hierarchy (for
example a modem may be classified as
/COMPUTER/HARDWARE/MODEM).
 Buyers make bids for items they are interested in. A bidding price and time of
bid placement is recorded. The person at the end of the auction with the

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highest bid price is declared the winner and a transaction between the buyer
and the seller may proceed soon after.
 Buyers and sellers may place feedback ratings on the purchase or sale of an
item. The feedback contains a rating between 1 and 10 and a comment. Note
that the ratings are placed on a completed transaction by the buyer or seller
of the item in the transaction.

Task 1

Construct an enhanced entity – relationship diagram for an auction

database using any computer aided software engineering tools

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IV. QUESTION AND ANSWER

1. State two conditions that indicate when a designer should consider using
supertype/subtype relationships.

A designer should consider using supertype/ subtype relationships on the

following conditions: whenever an attribute is applied to some, but not to all instances
of an entity type; or whenever instances of a subtype participate in a relationship unique
to that subtype. For example, if there is a hospital entity type PATIENT with two
subtypes:
OUTPATIENT and RESIDENT PATIENT, the identifier is Patient ID where All patients
have an admission date.

2. What is attribute inheritance? Why is it important?

Attribute inheritance pertains to the subtype entities that inherit values of all
attributes of a supertype. Therefore, an instance of a supertype can be also an instance
of a subtype.

Attribute inheritance is important, because it is most efficient to represent all

classes from a given inheritance hierarchy in a single table, because it substantially
reduces the number of table reads and eliminates joins when querying on objects in the
hierarchy.

Another use of attribute inheritance is common attributes can be shared in a

supertype. For example, car, jeepney & truck have common characteristics (attributes).
They can have same prices, vehicle name, and/ or engine displacement. This common
attributes can be shared in a single entity (vehicle, for example).

V. REFERENCES

Hoffer, J.A., Prescott, M.B., McFadden, F.R. (2016). Modern Database Management
12th Edition, Prentice Hall.

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