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ERModel
Concept:

Entity relationship model defines the conceptual view of database. It works

around real world entity and association among them. At view level, ER model is
considered well for designing databases.

 E-R Model A logical representation of the data for an organization or for a

business area is called E-R Model. It is also called has Entity-
Relationship Model.

 ER Modelstands for EntityRelationshipModelisa high-level conceptualdata

modeldiagram.ERmodelhelpstosystematicallyanalyzedatarequirementsto
produceawell-designeddatabase.TheERModelrepresentsreal-worldentities and
the relationships between them. Creating an ER Model in DBMS is
considered as a best practice before implementing your database.

 ERModelinghelpsyoutoanalyzedatarequirementssystematicallytoproduce a
well-designed database. So, it is considered a best practice to complete ER
modeling before implementing your database.

 Entity-RelationshipDiagramAgraphicalrepresentationofentity-relationship
model. Alsocalled E-R diagramor just ERD.

o ERmodelstandsforanEntity-Relationshipmodel.Itisahigh-leveldatamodel. Thismodelisusedto
definethedataelementsandrelationship for aspecified system.
o Itdevelopsaconceptualdesignforthedatabase.Italsodevelopsaverysimple and easy to design
view of data.
o In ER modeling, the database structure is portrayed as a diagram called an entity-relationship
diagram.
Forexample,Supposewedesignaschooldatabase.Inthisdatabase,thestudentwill
beanentitywithattributeslikeaddress,name,id,age,etc.Theaddresscanbeanother
entitywithattributeslikecity,streetname,pincode,etcandtherewillbearelationship between them.

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ComponentofERDiagram

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1. Entity:

Anentitymaybeanyobject,class,personorplace.IntheERdiagram,anentitycanbe
represented as rectangles.

Consider an organization as an example- manager, product, employee, department

etc. can be taken as an entity.

a. WeakEntity

Anentitythatdependsonanotherentitycalledaweakentity.Theweakentitydoesn't contain
any key attribute of its own. The weak entity is represented by a double rectangle.

b. StrongEntity
 Asinglerectangleisusedforrepresentingastrongentityset.
 Adiamondsymbolisusedforrepresentingtherelationshipthatexistsbetween two
strong entity sets.
 Asinglelineisusedforrepresentingtheconnectionofthestrongentityset with the
relationship set.
 Adoublelineisusedforrepresentingthetotalparticipationofanentityset with the
relationship set.
 Total participation mayormaynotexistintherelationship
Example-
 ConsiderthefollowingERdiagram-

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InthisERdiagram,
Twostrongentitysets“Student”and“Course”arerelatedtoeachother.
• StudentIDandStudentnamearetheattributesofentityset “Student”.
• StudentIDistheprimarykeyusingwhichanystudentcanbeidentified
uniquely.
• CourseIDandCoursenamearetheattributesofentityset“Course”.
• CourseIDistheprimarykeyusingwhichanycoursecanbeidentified
uniquely.
• DoublelinebetweenStudentandrelationshipsetsignifiestotalparticipation.
• Itsuggeststhateachstudentmustbeenrolledinatleastonecourse
• SinglelinebetweenCourseandrelationshipsetsignifiespartialparticipation.
• Itsuggeststhattheremightexistsomecoursesforwhichnoenrollmentsare made

2. Attribute

Theattributeisusedtodescribethepropertyofanentity.Eclipseisusedtorepresent an
attribute.

Forexample,id,age,contactnumber,name,etc.canbeattributesofastudent.

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a. KeyAttribute

Thekeyattributeisusedtorepresentthemaincharacteristicsofanentity.Itrepresents a
primary key. The key attribute is represented by an ellipse with the text underlined.

b. CompositeAttribute

Anattributethatcomposedofmanyotherattributesisknownasacompositeattribute.
Thecompositeattributeisrepresentedbyanellipse,andthoseellipsesareconnected with
an ellipse.

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c. MultivaluedAttribute

Anattributecanhavemorethanonevalue.Theseattributesareknownasa multivalued
attribute. The double oval is used to represent multivalued attribute.

Forexample,astudentcanhavemorethanonephonenumber.

d. DerivedAttribute

An attribute that can be derived from other attribute is known as aderived attribute.It
can be represented by a dashed ellipse.

Forexample,A person's agechanges overtime andcan bederived from another

attribute like Date of birth.

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3. Relationship

A relationship is used to describe the relation between entities. Diamond or rhombus

is used to represent the relationship.

Typesofrelationshipareasfollows:

a. One-to-OneRelationship

Whenonlyoneinstanceofanentityisassociatedwiththerelationship,thenitisknown as one
to one relationship.

Forexample,Afemalecanmarrytoonemale,andamalecanmarrytoonefemale.

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b. One-to-manyrelationship

When only one instance of the entity on the left, and more than one instance of an
entityontherightassociateswiththerelationshipthenthisisknownasaone-to-many
relationship.

For example,Scientist can invent many inventions, but the invention is done by the
only specific scientist.

c. Many-to-onerelationship

When more than one instance of the entity on the left, and only one instance of an
entity on the right associates with the relationship then it is known as a many-to-one
relationship.

For example,Student enrolls for only one course, but a course can have many
students.

d. Many-to-manyrelationship

When morethan oneinstanceoftheentityon theleft, and morethan oneinstanceof an

entity on the right associates with the relationship then it is known as a many-to-
many relationship.

For example,Employee can assign by many projects and project can have many
employees.

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EntityTypesandEntitySets

 A database usuallycontains groups of entities that are similar. Forexample, a

company employing hundreds of employees may want to store similar
informationconcerningeachoftheemployees.Theseemployeeentitiesshare the
same attributes, but each entity has its own value(s) foreach attribute. An
 Entitytypedefinesacollection(orset)ofentitiesthathavethesameattributes.
 Eachentitytypeinthedatabaseisdescribedbyitsnameandattributes.

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 Figureshowstwoentitytypes:EMPLOYEEandCOMPANY,andalistofsomeof the
attributes for each
Intension(entitytypedescribestheschema)

Extensionoftheentitytype(collectionofentitiesofaparticularentitytype grouped
into an entity set)

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 Entitytypedefinesacollection(orset)ofentitythathavesameattributes.
 Eachentitytypeinthedatabaseisdescribedbyitsnameandattributes.
 Entitysetisthecollectionofallentitiesofaparticularentitytypeina database at
any point in time.

 Theentitysetusuallyreferredtousingthesamenameastheentitytype.
 Entity type describes schema or intension for set entities that share same
structure
 Entitytypedefineasetofentitiesthathavethesameattributes.

 Entities with the same basic attributes are grouped or typed into an entity
type.
o Forexample,theentitytypeEMPLOYEEandPROJECT.

Name of the Employee Compan

y
Entity

Attributes' Name, Name,Pl

Age ,Salary ace

Entityset E1:vijay,22,230 C1:infy,mysore

00
E2:Prashant,3 C2:wipro,blore
0,50000

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Attribute

Theattributeisusedtodescribethepropertyofanentity.Eclipseisusedtorepresent an
attribute.

Forexample,id,age,contactnumber,name,etc.canbeattributesofastudent.

 ThebasicobjectthattheERmodelrepresentsisanentity,

 Entity-
whichisathingintherealworldwithanindependentexistence.Anentitymaybeanobj
ectwithaphysicalexistence(forexample,aparticularperson,car, house, or
employee) or it may be an object with a conceptual existence (for instance, a
company, a job, or a university course)

 Each entity has attributes—the particular properties that describe it. For
example,anEMPLOYEEentitymaybedescribedbytheemployee’sname,age,
address, salary, and job.

 Aspecificentitywillhaveavalueforeachofitsattributes.Forexampleaspecific
employeeentitymayhaveName='JohnSmith',SSN='123456789',Address
='731,Fondren,Houston,TX',Sex='M', BirthDate='09-JAN-55‘

 Each attribute has a value set (or data type) associated with it – e.g. integer,
string, subrange, enumerated type, …

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AttributeTypes:
 SimpleorAtomicAttribute
 CompositeAttributes
 Single-Valued
 MultiValued
 StoredAttribute
 DerivedAttribute

SimpleorAtomicAttribute
 Eachentityhasasingleatomicvaluefortheattribute
 AtomicAttributeisanattributethatisnotdivisible.
 CalledAtomicorSimpleAttributes.
 Example

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CompositeAttributes:
 Theattributemaybecomposedofseveralcomponents

 An attribute that composed of many other attributes is known as a composite

attribute. The composite attribute is represented by an ellipse, and those
ellipses are connected with an ellipse.

 Composite Attributes can be divided into smaller subparts, which represent

more basic attributes with independent meanings.
o Address(Apt#,House#,Street,City,State,ZipCode,Country),or
o Name(FirstName,MiddleName,LastName).
o Compositionmayformahierarchywheresomecomponentsare themselves
composite.

ExampleofCompositeAttribute

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Single-ValuedVSMultiValuedAttributes:
 Single-Valued:attributehasasinglevalueforaparticularentity

 An attribute can have more than one value. These attributes are known as a
multivalued attribute. The double oval is used to represent multivalued
attribute.

 MultiValueAttribute:Anentitymayhavemultiplevaluesforthatattribute
 ColorofaCARorPreviousDegreesofaSTUDENT.
 Denotedas{Color}or{PreviousDegrees}.

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StoredVSDerivedAttributed:

An attribute that can be derived from other attribute is known as aderived attribute.It
can be represented by a dashed ellipse.

 For a particular person entity, the value of Age can be determined from the
current (today’s) date and the value of that person’s Birthdates.

 TheAgeattributeishencecalledaderivedattributeandissaidtobederivable from
the Birth_date attribute, which is called a stored attribute.

 The value of certain attributes cannot be obtained form some other attributes,
they can not be derived such attributes are said to be stored attribute

 Some attribute values can be derived from related entities; for example, an
attribute Number_of_employees of a EPARTMENT entity can be derived by
counting the number of employees related to (working for) that department.

Key Attribute:

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 Animportantconstraintontheentitiesofanentitytypeisthekeyor
uniqueness constrainton attributes.
 An entity type usually has one or more attributes whose values are distinct for
each individual entity in the entity set. Such an attribute is called a key
attribute, and its values can be used to identify each entity uniquely.

 Forexample,theNameattributeisakeyoftheCOMPANYentitytypebecause no
two companies are allowed to have the same name.

 Specifying that an attributeis a keyof an entitytype means that the preceding

uniqueness property must hold for every entity set of the entity type. Hence, it
is a constraint that prohibits any two entities from having the same value for
the key attribute at the same time.

 Sometimes several attributes together form a key, meaning that the

combinationoftheattributevaluesmustbedistinctforeachentity.Noticethat such a
composite key must be minimal; that is, all component attributes must be
included in the composite attribute to have the uniqueness property.
Superfluous attributes must not be included in a key. In ER diagrammatic
notation, each key attribute has its name underlined inside the oval, as
illustrated in Figure.

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Relationship

A relationship is used to describe the relation between entities. Diamond or rhombus

is used to represent the relationship.

Arelationshipisanassociationamongtwoormoreentities.Arelationshipcaptures two or
more entities are related to one another. Relationship can be thought of as verb
linking two or more nouns

 E.g.studentRameshenrolsinDiscreteMathematicscourse•
 RelationshipenrolshasStudentandCourseastheparticipatingentitysets
 An“owns”iecompanyandcomputer
 A“supervises”betweenempanddepartment
 “performs”betweenartist andasong
 “proved”betweenmathematicianandtheorem

Typesofrelationshipareasfollows:

a. One-to-OneRelationship

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Whenonlyoneinstanceofanentityisassociatedwiththerelationship,thenitisknown as one
to one relationship.
Forexample,Afemalecanmarrytoonemale,andamalecanmarrytoonefemale.

b. One-to-manyrelationship

When only one instance of the entity on the left, and more than one instance of an
entityontherightassociateswiththerelationshipthenthisisknownasaone-to-many
relationship.

For example,Scientist can invent many inventions, but the invention is done by the
only specific scientist.

c. Many-to-onerelationship

When more than one instance of the entity on the left, and only one instance of an
entity on the right associates with the relationship then it is known as a many-to-one
relationship.

For example,Student enrolls for only one course, but a course can have many
students.

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d. Many-to-manyrelationship

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When morethan oneinstanceoftheentityon theleft, and morethan oneinstanceof an
entity on the right associates with the relationship then it is known as a many-to-
many relationship.

For example,Employee can assign by many projects and project can have many
employees.

DegreeofARelationship:
Thenumberofentitysetsthatparticipateinarelationshipsetistermedasthe degree of that
relationship set. Thus

Degreeofarelationshipset=Numberofentitysetsparticipatingina relationship set

 Thedegree of arelationshiptype isthenumberofparticipating entity types.

 Degree of relationship is the number of entity sets that are participated
(associated) in that relationship. That is, the number of entity sets that are
connected through the relationship in question is called the degree of
relationship.

 The degree of a relationship type is the number of participating entity types.

Meaning if the relationship is between two entity types (Employee and
Department), then the relationship is binary, or has a degree of two.

 If the relationship is between three participating entities, it has a degree of

three, and therefore is a ternary relationship.

 Hence, the WORKS_FOR relationship is of degree two. A relationship type of

degree two is called binary, and one of degree three is called ternary.

 BothMANAGESandWORKS_ONarebinaryrelationships.
 An exampleofa ternaryrelationshipis SUPPLY, Therelationship‘Supplies’ is
usedtorecordthespecificPARTssuppliedbyagivenVENDORtoaparticular
WAREHOUSE

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Unaryrelationship
 Isbetweentheinstancesofasingleentitytype(alsocalledrecursive relationships)

 ‘Is_Married_To’isaone-to-onerelationshipbetweeninstancesofthePERSON
entity type

 ‘Manages’isaone-to-manyrelationshipbetweeninstancesoftheEMPLOYEE
entity type

Employee

Supervisor1 NSupervisee

Supervisio
n

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Binaryrelationships:
 The degree of a relationship type is the number of participating entity types.
Meaning if the relationship is between two entity types (Employee and
Department), then the relationship is binary, or has a degree of two.

 Between the instances of two entity types, and is the most common type of
relationshipencounteredindatamodelling.e.g.(one-to-one)anEMPLOYEEis
assigned one PARKING_PLACE, and each PARKING_PLACE is assigned to one
EMPLOYEE

 e.g.(onetomany)aPRODUCT_LINEmaycontainmanyPRODUCTS,andeach
PRODUCTbelongstoonlyonePRODUCT_LINE

 e.g.(many-to-many)aSTUDENTmayregisterformorethanoneCOURSE,and
eachCOURSEmayhavemanySTUDENTS

Ternaryrelationships:
 If the relationship is between three participating entities, it has a degree of
three, and therefore is a ternary relationship.

 An example of a ternary relationship is SUPPLY, shown in Figure 3.10, where

eachrelationshipinstanceriassociatesthreeentities—asuppliers,apartp,and
aprojectj—wheneverssuppliespartptoprojectj.Relationshipscangenerally
beofanydegree,buttheonesmostcommonarebinaryrelationships.Higher-
degree relationships are generally more complex than binary relationships;

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4. N-aryRelationshipSet-
N-aryrelationshipsetisarelationshipsetwhere‘n’entitysetsparticipateinarelationship set

Cardinalty:
 The cardinality ratio specifies the maximum number of relationship instances
that an entity can participate in.

 The possible cardinality ratios for binary relationship types are: 1:1, 1:N, N:1,
M:N.

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 Cardinality ratios are shown on ER diagrams by displaying 1, M and N on the
diamonds.

 Theratioshownclosesttoanentity,representstheratiotheotherentityhasto that
entity.

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Onetoone(1:1)

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 In a one-one relationship, each entity of either entity set is related to at most
one entity of the other set.

One-to-ManyRelationship(1:N)
 One-to-Manyrelationshipsoccurwhenasingleentityinstanceisrelatedto many
occurrences of a second entity.

 Onecustomercanbeissuedwithmanyestimates(therelationshipisdescribed as
one-to-many)

Many-to-ManyRelationship(N:M)
 Many-to-many relationships occur where many instances of an entity relate to
many instances of a second entity

 Theserelationshipsusuallycontainahiddenentitywhichshouldbeextracted
 Usually N:M relationships are broken into one or more pairs of one-to-
manyrelationships

 Manyestimatesreferstomanystockitems(ormanystockitemsarereferredto by
many estimates)

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Manytoone:

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 Areverserelationofonetomany

WeakEntityTypes:
 Entitytypesthatdonothavekeyattributesarecalledweakentitytypes.

 AWeakEntityhastodependonastrongentityforitsexistence.So,itcreates a total
participation in the identifying relationship.

 Entities that belong to a weak entity type are identified by being related to
specific entities from another entity type in combination with one of their
attribute values.

 Thisentitytypeiscalledanidentifyingorownerentity type.
 Forexample,letsassumeinalibrarydatabase,wehaveanentitytypeBook.For each
book, we keep track of the author, ISBN, and title. The library may own
several copiesof thesamebook, andforeachcopy,itkeeps track ofthecopy
number (a different copy number for each copy of a given book) and price of
each copy.

 Aweak entity type always has atotalparticipationconstraint withrespect to

the identifying relationship, because a weak entity cannot exist without its
owner.

 Not all existence dependencies result in a weak entity type; if an entity has a
key attribute then it is not a weak entity.

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 A weak entity type usually has a partial key, which is the set of attributes that
canuniquelyidentifyweakentitiesthatarerelatedtothesameownerentity.

 Example:
o ADEPENDENTentityisidentifiedbythedependent’sfirstname,andthe
specificEMPLOYEEwithwhomthedependentisrelated
o NameofDEPENDENTisthepartialkey

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o DEPENDENTisaweakentitytype
o EMPLOYEE is its identifying entity type via the identifying relationship
typeDEPENDENT_OF

E-RDiagram
ER Diagramstands for Entity Relationship Diagram, also known as ERD is a
diagram that displays the relationship of entity sets stored in a database. In other
words,ERdiagramshelptoexplainthelogicalstructureofdatabases.ERdiagramsare
created based on three basic concepts: entities, attributes and relationships.
 AnEntity–relationshipmodel(ERmodel)describesthestructureofadatabase
with the help of a diagram, which is known as Entity Relationship Diagram
(ER Diagram).
 AnERmodelisadesignorblueprintofadatabasethatcanlaterbeimplemented
asadatabase.ThemaincomponentsofE-Rmodelare:entitysetandrelationship set.
 AnERdiagramshowstherelationshipamongentitysets.Anentitysetisagroup of
similar entities and these entities can have attributes.
 In terms of DBMS, an entity is a table or attribute of a table in database, so by
showing relationship among tables and their attributes, ER diagram shows the
complete logical structure of a database.
AsimpleERDiagram:
• In the following diagram we have two entities Student and College and their
relationship.
• The relationship between Student and College is many to one as a college can
have many students however a student cannot study in multiple colleges at the
same time.
• StudententityhasattributessuchasStu_Id,Stu_Name&Stu_Addrand
College entity has attributes such as Col_ID & Col_Name

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NotationsofE-RDiagram:

NamingConventionsandDesignAspects

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thebasicdesignissuesofanERdatabaseschemainthefollowingpoints:

1) UseofEntitySetvsAttributes
• The use of an entity set or attribute depends on the structure of the real-
worldenterprisethatisbeingmodelledandthesemanticsassociatedwithitsattributes.
• Itleadstoamistakewhentheuserusetheprimarykeyofanentitysetasan attribute of
another entity set.
• Instead,heshouldusetherelationshiptodoso.Also,theprimarykey attributes are
implicit in the relationship set, but we designate it in the relationship sets.
2) UseofEntitySetvs.RelationshipSets
• It is difficult to examine if an object can bebest expressed by an entity set
orrelationship set.
• Tounderstandanddeterminetherightuse,theuserneedtodesignatea relationship set
for describing an action that occurs in-between the entities.
• If there is a requirement of representing the object as a relationship set, then its
better not to mix it with the entity set.

3) UseofBinaryvsn-aryRelationshipSets
• Generally, the relationships described in the databases are binary relationships.
However, non-binary relationships can be represented by several binary
relationships.
• Forexample,wecancreateandrepresentaternaryrelationship'parent'thatmay relate
to a child, his father, as well as his mother. Such relationship can also be
representedbytwobinaryrelationshipsi.e,motherandfather,thatmayrelateto their
child.
• Thus,itispossibletorepresentanon-binaryrelationshipbyasetofdistinct binary
relationships.

4) PlacingRelationshipAttributes
• The cardinality ratios can become an affective measure in the placement of the
relationship attributes.
• So, it is better to associate the attributes of one-to-one or one-to-many
relationshipsetswithanyparticipatingentitysets,insteadofanyrelationshipset.
• Thedecisionofplacingthespecifiedattributeasarelationshiporentityattribute
should possess the characteristics of the real world enterprise that is being
modelled.
• For example, if there is an entity which can be determined by the combination
of participating entity sets, instead of determine it as a separate entity.
• Such type of attribute must be associated with the many-to-many relationship
sets.
• Thus,itrequirestheoverallknowledgeofeachpartthatisinvolvedinbdesigning and
modelling an ER diagram.

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• Thebasicrequirementistoanalysesthereal-worldenterpriseandtheconnectivity of
one entity or attribute with other.

SomeexamplesofERDiagram:

1.SchoolManagementsERModel

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