To illustrate the method Merise, we will take for each model a part of the following case (for limiting

the size of the

diagrams) :

A bank sells several products (saving or investment products needing a first investment) to private customers or
companies.

The salesmen receive the clientele to find a solution to their request and phone to the companies in the aim to sell their
products.
Once the product is sold (if the risk check department authorizes the sell), the clientele sends its initial investment to the
cash service which transmits it to the accounts department.

1. The data conceptual model (MCD)

1.1. Presentation

A MCD is an entity-association model which represents with organization the information of the information system. It is a formal writing
of data.

1.2. An entity

An entity is a group of information designating a material or an immaterial element.

This can be the "Salesmen" entity or the "Customers" entity. Each salesman of the bank will be an instance of the "Salesmen" entity.

1.3. An attribute

Attributes are the characteristics of an entity.

For the "Salesmen" entity, this can be its name, its first name or its qualification i n the company. We must specify the
type of the characteristic using the following table:

D  Date
T  Time
DT  Date Time
Axxx  Varchar of xxx characters
BL  Boolean
N  Number
Int  Integer
I  Autoincremental integer
1.4. A relation

Between the different entities of our MCD, several relations must exist.

It can exist tertiary relations or n-ary relations with more than two entities in the relation. Nevertheless, it is better to avoid those
relations.

1.5. A cardinality

Cardinalities define the number of elements of the first entity and the number of the second entity which can be used by the relation.
The first element of cardinality represents the minimum number and the second the maximum number. So the cardinalities can be 1/1,
0/1, 0/n, 1/n, n/m.
A salesman sells products to 0 or several customers.
A customer buys products from one or several salesmen.
The sell date is a relation attribute because it concerns both entities (customers and salesmen).
A salesman is contacted by one or several customers.
A customer contacts only one salesman (hypothesis of our case).

1.6. A key

Each entity must have a key to identify each instance of the entity by a unique key.
When many attributes of the entity must be used to the unique identification of an instance, it is better to create a new attribute with
number type to be the key.

A salesman is identified by his number of social security which must be not null and unique.
A customer is identified by his name, first name, birth date and address. The better solution is to create a unique number key for each
customer.

EXERCISE :

The model is designed to hold information relating to a personal DVD collection.

We know that:
An actor can be involved in many films and in different roles ;
A film can have many actors ;
A film genre can have many different films ;
A film certificate can have many films ;
A film can have many producers ;
A producer can produce many films.

QUESTIONS :

1) what are the different entities of the model ?

 Film
 Role
 Actor
 Genre
 Film certificate
 Producers

2) create the MCD (entities/relationships & cardinalities) drawing the model

with a pen & paper ;

3) create the data dictionary with the attributes. Specify the types of the
different attributes;
Voir schema gris
4) choose a PK primary key for each object;
Trucs en gras sur schéma
5) explain the cardinalities ;
A role can only has one actor and an actor can have many role
A genre can have many films but a film can only have one genre
A film can have one producer but producer can have many films
A film certificate can have many film and a film can have one certificate
6) check / control your job with the relational/physical model below :