Exercises 1

model
address
driver-id name license year

location
person owns car
report-number
date

driver participated accident

damage-amount

Figure 2.1 E-R diagram for a Car-insurance company.

Exercises
2.1 Explain the distinctions among the terms primary key, candidate key, and su-
perkey.
Answer: A superkey is a set of one or more attributes that, taken collectively,
al- lows us to identify uniquely an entity in the entity set. A superkey may
contain extraneous attributes. If K is a superkey, then so is any superset of K.A
superkey for which no proper subset is also a superkey is called a candidate
key. It is pos- sible that several distinct sets of attributes could serve as
candidate keys. The primary key is one of the candidate keys that is chosen by
the database designer as the principal means of identifying entities within an
entity set.
2.2 Construct an E-R diagram for a car-insurance company whose customers own
one or more cars each. Each car has associated with it zero to any number of
recorded accidents.
Answer: See Figure 2.1
2.3 Construct an E-R diagram for a hospital with a set of patients and a set of
medi- cal doctors. Associate with each patient a log of the various tests and
examina- tions conducted.
Answer: See Figure 2.2
2.4 A university registrar’s office maintains data about the following entities: (a)
courses, including number, title, credits, syllabus, and prerequisites; (b) course
offerings, including course number, year, semester, section number, instructor(s),
timings, and classroom; (c) students, including student-id, name, and program;
and (d) instructors, including identification number, name, department, and ti-
tle. Further, the enrollment of students in courses and grades awarded to stu-
dents in each course they are enrolled for must be appropriately modeled.
Construct an E-R diagram for the registrar’s office. Document all
assumptions that you make about the mapping constraints.
Answer: See Figure 2.3.
In the answer given here, the main entity sets are student, course, course-offering,
2 Chapter Entity Relationship

insurance
date−admitted
name
date−checked−out
ss#

patients
test−log Dr−Patient

doctors
test_id test performed_by

dss# specialization
name
test_name date time result

Figure 2.2 E-R diagram for a hospital.

sid name iid name

time secno room

student course− instructor

enrols teaches
offerings

year semester dept title

grade
program is offered

syllabus courseno

prerequisite
course
requires title
maincourse

credits

Figure 2.3 E-R diagram for a university.

and instructor. The entity set course-offering is a weak entity set dependent on
course. The assumptions made are :
a. a class meets only at one particular place and time. This E-R diagram
cannot model a class meeting at different places at different times.
b. There is no guarantee that the database does not have two classes meeting
at the same place and time.

2.5 Consider a database used to record the marks that students get in different ex-
ams of different course offerings.
 Exercises 3

sid name time secno room

course− offerings
student takes courseno

program marks year semester

eid exam time

name place

Figure 2.4 E-R diagram for marks database.

a. Construct an E-R diagram that models exams as entities, and uses a

ternary relationship, for the above database.
b. Construct an alternative E-R diagram that uses only a binary relationship
between students and course-offerings. Make sure that only one relationship
exists between a particular student and course-offering pair, yet you can
represent the marks that a student gets in different exams of a course offer-
ing.

Answer:
a. See Figure 2.4
b. See Figure 2.5
2.6 Construct appropriate tables for each of the E-R diagrams in Exercises 2.2 to
2.4.
Answer:
a. Car insurance tables:
person (driver-id, name, address)
car (license, year, model)
accident (report-number, date, location)
participated(driver-id, license, report-number, damage-amount)
b. Hospital tables:
patients (patient-id, name, insurance, date-admitted, date-checked-out)
doctors (doctor-id, name, specialization)
test (testid, testname, date, time,
result) doctor-patient (patient-id,
doctor-id)
test-log (testid, patient-id) performed-by (testid, doctor-id)
4 Chapter Entity Relationship

sid name time secno room

student course− offerings

takes courseno

year semester
program

marks examof

exam time

name place

Figure 2.5 Another E-R diagram for marks database.

c. University registrar’s tables:

student (student-id, name, program)
course (courseno, title, syllabus, credits)
course-offering (courseno, secno, year, semester, time, room)
instructor (instructor-id, name, dept, title)
enrols (student-id, courseno, secno, semester, year, grade)
teaches (courseno, secno, semester, year, instructor-id)
requires (maincourse, prerequisite)

2.7 Design an E-R diagram for keeping track of the exploits of your favourite
sports team. You should store the matches played, the scores in each match, the
players in each match and individual player statistics for each match.
Summary statis- tics should be modeled as derived attributes.
Answer: See Figure 2.6
2.8 Extend the E-R diagram of the previous question to track the same information
for all teams in a league.
Answer: See Figure 2.7 Note that a player can stay in only one team during a
season.

2.9 Explain the difference between a weak and a strong entity set.
Answer: A strong entity set has a primary key. All tuples in the set are distin-
guishable by that key. A weak entity set has no primary key unless attributes
of the strong entity set on which it depends are included. Tuples in a weak
entity set are partitioned according to their relationship with tuples in a strong
entity
 Exercises 5

name
date matchid stadium

match player
opponent played
age

season_score
own _score opp_score score

Figure 2.6 E-R diagram for favourite team statistics.

name age
matchid stadium score

match player
date played

season_score

score team_played player_of

result
team

name ranking

Figure 2.7 E-R diagram for all teams statistics.

set. Tuples within each partition are distinguishable by a discriminator, which

is a set of attributes.
2.10 We can convert any weak entity set to a strong entity set by simply adding ap-
propriate attributes. Why, then, do we have weak entity sets?
Answer: We have weak entities for several reasons:
We want to avoid the data duplication and consequent possible inconsis-
•
tencies caused by duplicating the key of the strong entity.
Weak entities reflect the logical structure of an entity being dependent on
•
another entity.
• Weak entities can be deleted automatically when their strong entity is
deleted.
• Weak entities can be stored physically with their strong entities.
2.11 Define the concept of aggregation. Give two examples of where this concept is
useful.
6 Chapter Entity Relationship

name deadline name

works−in
employee project

requires

machinery

name

Figure 2.8 E-R diagram Example 1 of aggregation.

name tie−up−date name

tie−up
manufacturer distributor

distribute

product

name

Figure 2.9 E-R diagram Example 2 of aggregation.

Answer: Aggregation is an abstraction through which relationships are treated

as higher-level entities. Thus the relationship between entities A and B is
treated as if it were an entity C. Some examples of this are:
a. Employees work for projects. An employee working for a particular
project uses various machinery. See Figure 2.8
b. Manufacturers have tie-ups with distributors to distribute products. Each
tie-up has specified for it the set of products which are to be distributed.
See Figure 2.9
 Exercises 7

name address
nameaddressphone

URL author URL

publisher

address email
written-by published-by name
phone
customer
year
book
title basketID
number basket-of
priceISBN
contains shopping-basket

stocks warehouse code

address phone
number

Figure 2.10 E-R diagram for Exercise 2.12.

2.12 Consider the E-R diagram in Figure 2.10, which models an online bookstore.
a. List the entity sets and their primary keys.
b. Suppose the bookstore adds music cassettes and compact disks to its col-
lection. The same music item may be present in cassette or compact disk
format, with differing prices. Extend the E-R diagram to model this addi-
tion, ignoring the effect on shopping baskets.
c. Now extend the E-R diagram, using generalization, to model the case
where a shopping basket may contain any combination of books, music
cassettes, or compact disks.

Answer:
2.13 Consider an E-R diagram in which the same entity set appears several times.
Why is allowing this redundancy a bad practice that one should avoid
whenever possible?
Answer: By using one entity set many times we are missing relationships in
8 Chapter Entity Relationship

ss# courseno
name dept
takes

student class

ss# teamname
name

student sport
plays

Figure 2.11 E-R diagram with entity duplication.

the model. For example, in the E-R diagram in Figure 2.11: the students taking
classes are the same students who are athletes, but this model will not show
that.

2.14 Consider a university database for the scheduling of classrooms for final
exams. This database could be modeled as the single entity set exam, with
attributes course-name, section-number, room-number, and time. Alternatively,
one or more additional entity sets could be defined, along with relationship
sets to replace some of the attributes of the exam entity set, as
course with attributes name, department, and c-number
•
section with attributes s-number and enrollment, and dependent as a weak
•
entity set on course
• room with attributes r-number, capacity, and building
a. Show an E-R diagram illustrating the use of all three additional entity sets
listed.
b. Explain what application characteristics would influence a decision to in-
clude or not to include each of the additional entity sets.

Answer:
a. See Figure 2.12
b. The additional entity sets are useful if we wish to store their attributes as
part of the database. For the course entity set, we have chosen to include
three attributes. If only the primary key (c-number) were included, and if
courses have only one section, then it would be appropriate to replace the
course (and section) entity sets by an attribute (c-number) of exam. The
reason it is undesirable to have multiple attributes of course as attributes of
exam is that it would then be difficult to maintain data on the courses,
particularly if a course has no exam or several exams. Similar remarks
apply to the room entity set.
 Exercises 9

namedepartment s-numberenrollment

course section of for

section

c-number
exam
room
in

r-number capacity building time exam-id

Figure 2.12 E-R diagram for exam scheduling.

2.15 When designing an E-R diagram for a particular enterprise, you have several
alternatives from which to choose.
a. What criteria should you consider in making the appropriate choice?
b. Design three alternative E-R diagrams to represent the university
registrar’s office of Exercise 2.4. List the merits of each. Argue in favor of
one of the alternatives.

Answer:
a. The criteria to use are intuitive design, accurate expression of the real-world
concept and efficiency. A model which clearly outlines the objects and
rela- tionships in an intuitive manner is better than one which does not,
because it is easier to use and easier to change. Deciding between an
attribute and an entity set to represent an object, and deciding between an
entity set and relationship set, influence the accuracy with which the real-
world concept is expressed. If the right design choice is not made,
inconsistency and/or loss of information will result. A model which can be
implemented in an efficient manner is to be preferred for obvious reasons.
b. Consider three different alternatives for the problem in Exercise 2.4.
See Figure 2.13
•
See Figure 2.14
•
See Figure 2.15
•
Each alternative has merits, depending on the intended use of the
database. Scheme 2.13 has been seen earlier. Scheme 2.15 does not require
a separate entity for prerequisites. However, it will be difficult to store all
the prereq- uisites(being a multi-valued attribute). Scheme 2.14 treats
prerequisites as well as classrooms as separate entities, making it useful
for gathering data about prerequisites and room usage. Scheme 2.13 is in
between the others, in that it treats prerequisites as separate entities but
not classrooms. Since a registrar’s office probably has to answer general
questions about the num- ber of classes a student is taking or what are all
the prerequisites of a course, or where a specific class meets, scheme 2.14 is
probably the best choice.