Data Modeling and ERD

Engineering and Technology Management

Business rules
Business rule is a statement that defines or
A
constraints some aspects of the business.
are derived from policies, procedures, events, functions,
and other business objects, and state constraints on the
organization.
govern how data are handled and stored.
govern creating, updating, and removing data in an
information processing and storage system.

Engineering and Technology Management

Examples

Every student in the university must have a

faculty advisor.
A student may register for a section of a
course only if s/he has successfully completed
the prerequisities for that course.
A preferred customer qualifies for a 10
percent discount, unless he has an overdue
account balance.

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Business rules

Assert business structure

Control/influence business behavior
Expressed in terms familiar to end users
Automated through DBMS software

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Business rules

Declarative what, not how

Precise clear, agreed-upon meaning
Atomic one statement
Consistent internally and externally
Expressible structured, natural language
Distinct non-redundant
Business-oriented understood by business
people

Engineering and Technology Management

Entity-Relationship Model

First proposed by Chen 1976

Several times expanded
Different notations available, most notably
Chen original
Crow foot

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Models and Modeling

Model is always a simplified depiction of reality

Modeling always has a certain purpose
What might be important in one context might be
uninteresting in another one

In creating a model, we are abstracting from

the full complexity of real life
We need to decide on which facts and relations to
keep, and which special cases to strip away

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E-R model constructs

Entity Type collection of entities that share common
properties or characteristics (often corresponds to a
table)

Entity instance a single occurence of an entity type

(often corresponds to a row in a table)
Attribute - property or characteristic of an entity type
that is of interest to the organization (often corresponds
to a field in a table)

Relationship type link (association) between entity

types (corresponds to primary key-foreign key equivalencies
in related tables)

Relationship instance association between entity

instances
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Sample E-R diagram

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Basic E-R notation

Entity
symbols

Relationship
symbols

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A special
entity that is
also a
relationship

Attribute
symbols

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Entities

Person: EMPLOYEE, STUDENT, PATIENT

Place: STORE, WAREHOUSE, STATE
Object: MACHINE, BUILDING, AUTOMOBILE
Event: SALE, REGISTRATION, RENEWAL,
RETURN
Concept: ACCOUNT, COURSE, WORK CENTER

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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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Inappropriate entities

Systemuser

Systemoutput

Appropriate entities

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Entities

Exercise
Identify possible entities in the following description.
An Airline company wants to store and manage their
data on flights. They own several airplanes, each
with a certain number of seats, and have a number
of employees. Also they have customers in their
frequent flyer program, each has a certain mileage in
his/her account. The planes are assigned to certain
flights, as well as employees, and customers can buy
seats on the flights. Each flight has a destination, a
time and date, and a number of miles.

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Attributes

Attribute - property or characteristic of

an entity type
Classifications of attributes:
Simple versus Composite Attribute
Single-Valued versus Multivalued Attribute
Stored versus Derived Attributes
Identifier Attributes

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Identifiers (Keys)

Identifier (Key) - An attribute (or combination

of attributes) that uniquely identifies individual
instances of an entity type
Simple Key versus Composite Key
Candidate Key an attribute that could be a
keysatisfies the requirements for being a key

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Characteristics of identifiers

Will not change in value

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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A composite attribute

Anattribute
brokeninto
componentparts

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Simple key attribute

Thekeyisunderlined

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Composite key attribute

Thekeyiscomposed
oftwosubparts

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Entity with a multivalued attribute (Skill) and

derived attribute (Years_Employed)

Derived from date

employed and current date
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Multivalued:
an employee can have
more than one skill
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An attribute that is both multivalued and composite

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Attributes

Exercise
Identify possible attributes in the example from last
exercise. Find additional possible attributes. Decide
on which attributes would be multi-valued, and which
would be candidate keys.
An Airline company wants to store and manage their
data on flights. They own several airplanes, each
with a certain number of seats, and have a number
of employees. Also they have customers in their
frequent flyer program, each has a certain mileage in
his/her account. The planes are assigned to certain
flights, as well as employees, and customers can buy
seats on the flights. Each flight has a destination, a
time and date, and a number of miles.
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Relationships

Relationship Types vs. Relationship Instances

The relationship type is modeled as the diamond and
lines between entity typesthe instance is between
specific entity instances
Relationships can have attributes
These describe features pertaining to the association
between the entities in the relationship
Two entities can have more than one type of
relationship between them (multiple
relationships)

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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
related to
another of
the same
entity type

Entities of two
different
types related
to each other

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Entities of
three
different
types related
to each other
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Unary relationships

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Binary relationships

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Ternary relationships

Note: a relationship can have attributes of its own

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Cardinality of relationships

One to One
Each entity in the relationship will have exactly one
related entity
One to Many
An entity on one side of the relationship can have
many related entities, but an entity on the other side
will have a maximum of one related entity
Many to Many
Entities on both sides of the relationship can have
many related entities on the other side

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Cardinality constraints

Cardinality Constraints - the number of instances of

one entity that can or must be associated with each
instance of another entity.
Minimum Cardinality
If zero, then optional
If one or more, then mandatory
Maximum Cardinality
The maximum number

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Cardinality

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Basic relationship with only maximum cardinalities showing

Mandatory minimum cardinalities

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Optional cardinalities with unary degree, one-to-one

relationship

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Relationship type

Entity and Relationship instances

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A binary relationship with an attribute

Here,thedatecompletedattributepertainsspecifically
totheemployeescompletionofacourseitisan
attributeoftherelationship.

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A ternary relationship with attributes

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A unary relationship with an attribute. This has

a many-to-many relationship

Representingabillofmaterialsstructure
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Examples of multiple relationships entities can

be related to one another in more than one way
Employees and departments

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Professors and courses (fixed upon constraint)

Here,max
cardinality
constraint is 4

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Cardinalities
Exercise
Find the right cardinalities...

Id

Name
Student

Grade
takes

advises

Professor
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Course
uses

Textbook
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Cardinalities
Exercise
Infer the business rule difference(s) to Bogazici.

Professor

Course

gives

What does the first company not support compared to the

second one?

Customer
Date
Customer

Product

buys
Invoice

Product

buys
Invoice

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Strong vs. Weak Entities, and

identifying relationships

Strong entities
exist independently of other types of entities
has its own unique identifier
represented with single-line rectangle
Weak entity
dependent on a strong entitycannot exist on its own
does not have a unique identifier
represented with double-line rectangle
Identifying relationship
links strong entities to weak entities
represented with double line diamond

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Strong and weak entities

Strong entity

Identifying
relationship

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Weak entity
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Supertype / Subtype and Subset

Supertype / Subtype
Implements generalisation
All attributes of Supertype pertain to Subtypes
Normally split on one attribute
Subset
Similar, but non-excluse
One entity instance can belong to more than one class

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Supertype/subtyperelationships

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ERD
Exercise
Model the following situation using ERD. Include
appropriate attributes.
A consulting company maintains offices in several
countries. Each office can have several employees
assigned, each employee is assigned to one office.
Customers offer projects to the company, each
project is from one customer. Employees work on the
project for a given time and intensity, and can work
on more than one project at the same time. A project
will have several employees assigned. Each
employee has a list of skills. An employee can be
either a senior or junior consultant (who has a date
for promotion set), a senior one manages several
junior one, each junior is assigned to one senior. For
each project, there can be several invoices with
different amounts and dates.
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