MIRPUR UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

DEPARMENT OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

 DATABASE SYSTEMS
(Lecture # 3)
Database Schema and ER Model Constructs

Engr. Saba Zafar

(Lecturer)

Date: 21-11-2023
 LECTURE CONTENTS

• E-R Model Constructs

• Strong Entity Type vs Weak Entity Type

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 E-R Model Constructs
• Entities – It is a person, place, object, event, or concept in user environment
about which organization wishes to maintain data
• Person: EMPLOYEE, STUDENT
• Place: STORE, WAREHOUSE, STATE
• Object: MACHINE, BUILDING, AUTOMOBILE
• Event: SALE, REGISTRATION, RENEWAL
• Concept: ACCOUNT, COURSE, WORK CENTER

• Entity Type – Collection of entities (often corresponds to a table) that

share common properties or characteristics (can be called Entity)
• It is always singular as its name represent collection of items
• We use capital letter for names of entity type i.e. STUDENT, EMPLOYEE, SALE
• It is described just once in the database using metadata
• Entity instance –Single occurrence of Entity Type (often corresponds to
a row in a table).
• Many entity instances of any entity type may be represented by data stored in
database
• For Example: There is one EMPLOYEE entity type in most organization, but there
may be hundreds of entity instances of this entity type stored in the database
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 Difference b/w Entity Type and Entity Instance

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 What Should an Entity Be?

• SHOULD BE:
• 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

• SHOULD NOT BE:

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

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 Example of Inappropriate entities

System System
user Inappropriate output
entities

Appropriate
entities

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 Strong Entity Type vs Weak Entity Type
Strong Entity Type:
• It can exists independently of other entity types
• Entity instances of each Strong Entity Type have a unique
characteristics (identifier or key)
• For Example: EMPLOYEE, STUDENT, ORDER, SALE
Weak Entity Type:
• Its existence depends on some other entity type
• It does not have its own identifier
• Represented by double-lined rectangle
• The entity type on which weak entity depends is called
Identify owner
• Identifying Relationship: Relationship between weak entity
and its owner i.e. carries as shown in figure
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 Weak Entity and Identify Owner

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 E-R Model Construct (cont…)
• Relationship – It is an association representing an interaction among
instances of one or more entity types, so it has a verb phrase name
• For Example: EMPLOYEE completes a COURSE. Here complete is a
relationship

• Relationship Type– Category of relationship. Meaningful association

between (link ) entity types

• Relationship Instance – Link between entity instances

• Each relationship instance includes exactly one entity instance from
each participating entity type

• Attribute–Property or characteristic of an entity or relationship type

(often corresponds to a field in a table)

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 Relationship Type vs Relationship Instance

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 Basic E-R notation

Entity
Attribute
symbols
symbols

A special entity
that is also a Relationship
relationship symbols

Relationship
degrees
specify number
of entity types Relationship
involved cardinalities
specify how
many of each
entity type is
allowed
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 Attributes
• Attribute–Property or characteristic of an entity or
relationship type. It has a noun name.
• For Example: The attributes of STUDENT entity type can be
Student_ID, Student_Name, Home_Address, Tel_No

• Classifications of attributes:
• Required versus Optional Attributes
• Simple versus Composite Attribute
• Single-Valued versus Multi-valued Attribute
• Stored versus Derived Attributes
• Identifier Attributes

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 A composite attribute

An attribute broken
into component
parts

Entity with multivalued attribute (Skill) and derived attribute

(Years_Employed)

Derived
Multivalued
from date
an employee can have
employed and
more than one skill
current date

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 Identifiers (Keys)

• Identifier (Key)–An attribute (or combination of attributes) that

uniquely identifies individual instances of an entity type
• Simple versus Composite Identifier
• Candidate Identifier – An attribute that could be a key…satisfies the
requirements for being an identifier

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 Characteristics of Identifiers

• Will not change in value e.g. your Roll No

• Will not be null
• No intelligent identifiers (e.g., containing locations or
people that might change)
• Substitute new, simple keys for long, composite keys

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Simple Identifier Attribute: An atomic attribute that can’t be
broken down into smaller meaningful components i.e. Student_ID
Composite Identifier Attributes: An attribute that has
meaningful component parts i.e. Flight_ID
Figure 3-9 Simple and composite identifier attributes
The identifier is boldfaced and underlined

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 More on Relationships
Relationship Types vs. Relationship Instances
• The relationship type is modeled as lines between entity
types…the relationship instance is between specific entity
instances

• Relationships can have attributes

• These describe features related to the association between
the entities in the relationship

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 Degree of Relationships
• Degree of a relationship is the number of entity types
that participate in it

• Unary Relationship
• Binary Relationship
• Ternary Relationship

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 Degree of Relationships

One entity Entities of

related to two different Entities of three
another of types related different types
the same to each other related to each
entity type other
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 Examples of relationships of different degrees

a) Unary relationships

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 Examples of relationships of different degrees

b) Binary relationships

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 Examples of relationships of different degrees

c) Ternary relationship

Note: a relationship can have attributes of its own

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 Sample E-R Diagram

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 REFERENCES
Database System Concepts latest Edition by Abraham
Fundamentals of database by Elmasri, latest edition
Date, C, J.: "An Introduction to Database Systems", latest Edition, Pearson, Boston.

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THANKS