CS4710 Introduction to Database Systems

Enhanced-ER Data Model

Instructor: Yi-Shin Chen

Office: EECS 3201
Email: [email protected]
Office Hour: Tu. 1-2PM, Th. 3-4pm

Motivation
ƒ ER data model is useful to describe “traditional”
applications
ƒ Newer types of applications were difficult to model, for
example:
} Design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM)
} Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
ƒ These applications had more complex requirements
ƒ Semantic data modeling concepts needed to be
incorporated
} Result⇒ Enhanced (or Extended) ER data model

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 EER Model Concepts
ƒ Includes all modeling concepts of basic ER
ƒ Additional concepts: subclasses/superclasses,
specialization/generalization, categories,
attribute inheritance
ƒ It is used to model applications more completely
and accurately if needed
ƒ It includes some object-oriented concepts, such
as inheritance

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Key Ideas of EER

ƒ Generalization
} Compute the union of two or more entity sets (or subclasses)
⇒ Produce a higher-level entity set (or superclass)
⇒ Containment relationship between the superclass and subclass(es)
ƒ Specialization
} Construct the subclasses that are a subset of superclasses
} Reverse of generalization
ƒ Example

We focus on specialization afterward

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 Why Specialization
ƒ The process allows us to
} Define a set of subclasses of an entity type
} Establish additional specific attributes with each
subclass
} Establish additional specific relationship sets between
each subclass and other entity sets

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Subclass
ƒ Subclass entities inherit attributes from the superclass
ƒ An entity can be a member of a number of subclasses

Sex Name ID Address DoB

Person

Employee Alumnus Student

Salary Class Major

ƒ An entity cannot just being a member of a subclass but not superclass

} It is not essential that every entity in a superclass be a member of some
subclass

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 Different Types of Specialization
ƒ Predicate-defined (or condition-defined)
} Determine subclass membership by examining the value of a
specific attribute (termed “defining attribute”)

Sex Name ID Address DoB

Employee

Secretary Faculty Technician

Typing Speed Research Interest Specialty

ƒ User-defined
} The user specifies subclass membership individually
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Different Types of Specialization

ƒ Disjoint: an entity can be a member of at most one subclass
ƒ Overlap: when the subclasses are not disjoint

ƒ Total: each entity must be a member of some subclass

ƒ Partial: An entity might belong to no subclass

ƒ Disjointness and completeness constraints are independent

} Hence, four combinations are possible
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 Hierarchies vs. Lattices
ƒ Hierarchy has a constraint that every subclass has only
one superclass (called single inheritance)
ƒ In a lattice, a subclass can be subclass of more than one
superclass (called multiple inheritance)
} A subclass with more than one superclass is called a shared
subclass
ƒ In a lattice or hierarchy, a subclass inherits attributes not
only of its direct superclass, but also of all its
predecessor superclasses

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Lattice Example

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 Categories (UNION TYPES)
ƒ In some cases, need to model a single
superclass/subclass relationship with more than one
superclass
} Superclasses represent different entity types
} Such a subclass is called a category or UNION TYPE

ƒ Example: Database for vehicle registration, vehicle

owner can be a person, a bank (holding a lien on a
vehicle) or a company.
} Category (subclass) OWNER is a subset of the union of the
three superclasses COMPANY, BANK, and PERSON
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Example of Categories

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 Category Member vs. Shared Subclass

ƒ A category member must exist in at least one of

its superclasses
ƒ Note: The difference from shared subclass,
which is subset of the intersection of its
superclasses (shared subclass member must
exist in all of its superclasses).

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Example: Railway System

ƒ Each line has a unique line code
} Lines may run via mountain or sea
} Each line is associated with origin, destination, intermediate stops, and
all scheduled departure time, and scheduled arrival time
} Not every line runs every day
} Every time the line runs must be recorded.
ƒ There are four types of trains: each has fixed cars
} TzeChiang, ChuKuang,
} TzeChiang: the fastest one
} ChuKuang: the second fastest
} FuHsing: the slowest one
} EMU: where customers can sit anywhere
ƒ Tickets
} The types of tickets are classified into normal, half-fare, and platform
tickets

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 Example: Railway System (Contd.)
ƒ Information of normal and half-fare tickets includes
} The origin
} The destination
} Price
} The line he takes
} The date he takes
} Car number and seat number should also be recorded except for EMU
} If all seats were sold out, passengers will get tickets without seats
} If a customer bought a round trip ticket, he could get 10% discount
ƒ Customers can book tickets by the Internet or by telephone
} One customer can book up to four tickets at one time
ƒ Booking information includes
} Personal ID of the customer
} The date he booked the tickets
} The information of the tickets
} Booked tickets are only reserved for 5 days
ƒ If a customer didn’t pay for the booked tickets in time, the booking is invalid
and the seats are released for other customers

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Example: Reservation System

ƒ Reservation System for airline companies
} Each company has many aircrafts
ƒ Each has a registration number, make, model, and the maximum
capacity of passengers
} Each company has many flights
ƒ Flights can be classified into domestic or international routes
ƒ Each flight departs from and arrives at registered airports
} An airport also has an airport code, description name, city and country
} Flight may stop at some intermediate stops
} Customers could take a transfer flight from intermediate stops
ƒ Each flight has three seat classes
} First Class, Business Class, and Economy class
ƒ For every flight, the system should store a list of available seats
ƒ The seat arrangements are associated with aircrafts
ƒ Each seat can only be reserved to one customer
ƒ Ticket prices are associated with classes and time
ƒ Customers can make reservation without reserving seats
ƒ Each flight allow 20% overbooking

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 Example: Reservation System (Contd.)

ƒ The reservation system should keep

} A unique identifier for each customer
ƒ This identifier is assigned automatically once customers make a
new reservation in the system
} Customer information
} Flight information
} The time that reservation was made
} A credit-card number associated with the reservation
} A flag which indicates whether this particular reservation is paid
or not
ƒ When a reservation is paid it is transformed automatically to a ticket
ƒ The reservation can be canceled before flight departure, however
the ticket is still valid (to exchange some products)
ƒ Each reservation might be associated with many flights
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Example: Registration-System
ƒ For University System of Taiwan (UST)
ƒ Each school has many departments
ƒ Each department will offer many courses
} Some courses are specially designed for students majoring in
some subjects
} Some courses will be offered regularly
} For some courses, there will be many classes in one semester
taught by different instructors
} Some courses will have prerequisite subjects
} Some classes will control the number of seats
} The system should avoid time conflicts when students schedule
their courses

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 Example: Registration-System
(Cond.)
} Some courses are specially designed for graduate students
} Graduate students can become TAs of certain classes
ƒ However, he/she has to take this course before
} A full-time student should enroll in at least
ƒ 8-units/semester for graduate students
ƒ 6-units/semester for graduate students who have TA/RAships
ƒ 12-units/semester for undergraduate students
} The instructors of classes can be
ƒ Faculty
ƒ PhD students (who can only teach undergraduate-level classes)
} Students receiving RAships should work with some faculty

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Example: Movie On Demand System

ƒ The movie-on-demand (MoD) provider operates several
video servers in different geographical locations that let
customers view movies at home via a special set-top box
that interfaces with their TV and that further connects to
the video server network.
ƒ The database must represent the following information:
} Video Movie Information
ƒ A movie has a title, release date, rating, running time, director, and
one or more actors
ƒ Movies are split between domestic and foreign movies
} A foreign movie uses a language other than English and may provide
English subtitles
} Domestic movies are further categorized into comedy, drama, action,
and horror movies
ƒ A comedy movie has the degree of “funniness” which ranges
between 1 and 5
ƒ A drama movie has a short description such as “love story”,
“documentary”, “humanity”, etc.

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 Example: Movie On Demand System (Con.)

ƒ Each movie could be reviewed by one or more critics, each of whom

evaluates it as between zero and five stars
} A critic has a name and a phone number
} He or she might review one or more movies
ƒ A movie may have won one or more academy awards (i.e., “Oscars”)
} If that is the case, then the movie has a list of all the categories in which it won
} E.g., “best picture”, “best actor”, “best actress”, etc.
ƒ Each movie is stored on a number of different video servers
} Each video server has a unique ID and an address (location)
} If a customer requests a movie then that movie is delivered (streamed) from one
of the video servers to the customer’s home
} Each movie can be supplied by only one distributor
ƒ One distributor might provide several movies
} For each distributor, the MoD provider keeps track of information about its name,
address, and phone number
} A distributor’s address can be accessed as street address, city, state, and zip
code individually
} However, the entire address of a distributor can also be retrieved as a unit

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Example: Movie On Demand System (Con.)

ƒ Employee Information
} An employee has a name, a social security number, date of birth, salary,
and a phone number
} He or she may have a supervisor
} Employees are either permanent or temporary, but not both
} Each permanent employee has an employee number
} All supervisors are permanent employees
} An employee works at the location of one of the video servers
ƒ Customer Information
} A customer has a social security number, a name, a phone number, and
an address
} Each customer must have one or more credit cards
ƒ Each credit card includes a type of credit card (Visa/MasterCard/…), a card
number, and an expiration date.
ƒ Viewing Transaction Information
} Each customer can view movies from a video server
} For each viewing transaction, the viewing date and time is recorded.

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 Example: Movie On Demand System (Con.)

ƒ Bill Statement Information

} Each customer receives one bill statement after each viewing
transaction
} Each statement has a billing date, a billing number, one or more
movie titles, and a total charge.
} A billing number is unique for a particular customer
ƒ It is not unique across different customers
ƒ Release Charge Information
} For each movie, a release type is defined
ƒ Arbitrarily recent movies are marked as “new release,” whereas
others are marked as “ordinary release.”
} The store keeps track of different charge information for different
release types
ƒ For newly released movies, the fee is $100 for the first viewing and
$30 for each additional viewing
ƒ For the other ones, the fee is $50 for the first viewing and $15 for
each additional viewing

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