Fundamentals of database system

Chapter 3:
Conceptual Databas Designe- E-R Modeling

Database Design
Database design is the process of coming up with different kinds of specification for the data to be stored
in the database. The database design part is one of the middle phases we have in information systems
development where the system uses a database approach. Design is the part on which we would be
engaged to describe how the data should be perceived at different levels and finally how it is going to be
stored in a computer system.
Information System with Database application consists of several tasks which include:
 Planning of Information systems Design
 Requirements Analysis,
 Design (Conceptual, Logical and Physical Design)
 Implementation
 Testing and deployment
 Operation and Support
From these different phases, the prime interest of a database system will be the Design part which is
again sub divided into other three sub-phases. These sub-phases are:
1. Conceptual Design
2. Logical Design, and
3. Physical Design

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 Fundamentals of database system

3.1 Conceptual Database Design

 Conceptual design is the process of constructing a model of the information used in an enterprise,
independent of any physical considerations.
 It is the source of information for the logical design phase.
 Mostly uses an Entity Relationship Model to describe the data at this level.
 After the completion of Conceptual Design one has to go for refinement of the schema which is
verification of Entities, Attributes, and Relationships
 Conceptual design revolves around discovering and analyzing organizational and user data
requirements
 The important activities are to identify: Entities; Attributes, Relationships and Constraints
 And based on these components develop the ER model using ER diagrams

3.2 The Entity Relationship (E-R) Model

Entity-Relationship modeling is used to represent conceptual view of the database. The main
components of ER Modeling are:

 Entities
 Corresponds to entire table, not row
 Represented by Rectangle

 Attributes
 Represents the property used to describe an entity or a relationship
 Represented by Oval

 Relationships
 Represents the association that exist between entities
 Represented by Diamond

 Constraints
 Represent the constraint in the data
 Cardinality and Participation Constraints.

Before working on the conceptual design of the database, one has to know and answer the following
basic questions.
 What are the entities and relationships in the enterprise?

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 What information about these entities and relationships should we store in the database?
 What are the integrity constraints that hold? Constraints on each data with respect to update,
retrieval and store.
 Represent this information pictorially in ER diagrams, then map ER diagram into a relational
schema.

Developing an E-R Diagram

 Designing conceptual model for the database is not a one linear process but an iterative activity
where the design is refined again and again.

 To identify the entities, attributes, relationships, and constraints on the data, there are different set
of methods used during the analysis phase. These include information gathered by…
 Interviewing end users individually and in a group
 Questionnaire survey
 Direct observation
 Examining different documents
 Analysis of requirements gathered
 Nouns -- prospective entities
 Adjectives--prospective attributes
 Verbs/verb phrases-prospective relationships
 The basic E-R model is graphically depicted and presented for review.

 The process is repeated until the end users and designers agree that the E-R diagram

is a fair representation of the organization‘s activities and functions.

 Checking for Redundant Relationships in the ER Diagram. Relationships between

entities indicate access from one entity to another - it is therefore possible to access
one entity occurrence from another entity occurrence even if there are other entities
and relationships that separate them - this is often referred to as Navigation' of the
ER diagram
 The last phase in ER modeling is validating an ER Model against requirement of the

user
Graphical Representations in ER Diagramming

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 Entity is represented by a RECTANGLE containing the name of the entity

Connected entities are called relationship participants

 Attributes are represented by OVALS and are connected to the entity by a line.

key
 Primary Keys are underlined and
 A derived attribute is indicated by a DOTTED LINE. (……..)
 Relationships are represented by Diamond shaped symbols
 Weak Relationship is a relationship between Weak and Strong Entities
 Strong Relationship is a relationship between two strong Entities

Example 1: Build an ER Diagram for the following information:

A student record management system will have the following two basic data object categories with their
own features or properties: Students will have an Id, Name, Dept, Age, GPA and Course will have an Id,
Name, Credit Hours. Whenever a student enroll in a course in a specific Academic Year and Semester,
the Student will have a grade for the course.

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Example 2: Build an ER Diagram for the following information:

A Personnel record management system will have the following two basic data object categories with
their own features or properties: Employee will have an Id, Name, DoB, Age, Tel and Department will
have an Id, Name, Location. Whenever an Employee is assigned in one Department, the duration of his
stay in the respective department should be registered.

Structural Constraints on Relationship

1. Constraints on Relationship / Multiplicity/ Cardinality Constraints
 Multiplicity constraint is the number or range of possible occurrence of an entity
type/relation that may relate to a single occurrence/tuple of an entity type/relation
through a particular relationship.
 Mostly used to insure appropriate enterprise constraints.
1. One-to-one relationship:
 A customer is associated with at most one loan via the relationship borrower
 A loan is associated with at most one customer via borrower

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E.g.: Relationship Manages between STAFF and BRANCH

The multiplicity of the relationship is:
 One branch can only have one manager
 One employee could manage either one or no branches

2. One-To-Many Relationships
 In the one-to-many relationship a loan is associated with at most one customer via
borrower, a customer is associated with several (including 0) loans via borrower

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 Fundamentals of database system

E.g.: Relationship Leads between STAFF and PROJECT

The multiplicity of the relationship
 one staff may lead one or more project(s)
 one project is lead by one staff

3. Many-To-Many Relationship
 A customer is associated with several (possibly 0) loans via borrower
 A loan is associated with several (possibly 0) customers via borrower

E.g.: Relationship ―Teaches‖ between INSTRUCTOR and COURSE

The multiplicity of the relationship:
One Instructor Teaches one or more Course(s)
One Course Thought by Zero or more Instructor(s)

Participation of an Entity Set in a Relationship Set

Participation constraint of a relationship is involved in identifying and setting the mandatory or optional

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 Fundamentals of database system

feature of an entity occurrence to take a role in a relationship. There are two distinct participation
constraints, namely: Total Participation and Partial Participation
 Total participation: every tuple in the entity or relation participates in at least one relationship
by taking a role. This means, every tuple in a relation will be attached with at least one other
tuple. The entity with total participation in a relationship will be connected to the relationship
using a double line.
 Partial participation: some tuple in the entity or relation may not participate in the relationship.
This means, there is at least one tuple from that Relation not taking any role in that specific
relationship. The entity with partial participation in a relationship will be connected to the
relationship using a single line.
Example 1:
 Participation of EMPLOYEE in ―belongs to‖ relationship with DEPARTMENT is total
since every employee should belong to a department.
 Participation of DEPARTMENT in ―belongs to‖ relationship with EMPLOYEE is total
since every department should have more than one employee

Example 2:

 Participation of employee in ―manages‖ relationship with Department, is partial

participation since not all employees are managers.

 Participation of DEPARTMENT in ―Manages‖ relationship with EMPLOYEE is total

since every department should have a manager.

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Problem in ER Modeling
The Entity-Relationship Model is a conceptual data model that views the real world as consisting of
entities and relationships. The model visually represents these concepts by the Entity-Relationship
diagram. The basic constructs of the ER model are entities, relationships, and attributes. Entities are
concepts, real or abstract, about which information is collected. Relationships are associations
between the entities. Attributes are properties which describe the entities. While designing the ER
model one could face a problem on the design which is called a connection traps. Connection traps
are problems arising from misinterpreting certain relationships.
There are two types of connection traps;
1. Fan trap:
Occurs where a model represents a relationship between entity types, but the pathway
between certain entity occurrences is ambiguous.
May exist where two or more one-to-many (1:M) relationships fan out from an entity.
The problem could be avoided by restructuring the model so that there would be no
1:M relationships fanning out from a singe entity and all the semantics of the
relationship is preserved.
Example:

Semantics description of the problem;

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 Fundamentals of database system

Problem: Which car (Car1 or Car3 or Car5) is used by Employee 6 Emp6 working in
Branch 1 (Br1)? Thus from this ER Model one can not tell which car is used by which
staff since a branch can have more than one car and also a branch is populated by more
than one employee. Thus we need to restructure the model to avoid the connection trap.
To avoid the Fan Trap problem we can go for restructuring of the E-R Model. This will
result in the following E-R Model.

2. Chasm Trap:
Occurs where a model suggests the existence of a relationship between entity types, but
the path way does not exist between certain entity occurrences. Chasm trap may exist when
there are one or more relationships with a minimum multiplicity on cardinality of zero
forming part of the pathway between related entities.
Example:

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If we have a set of projects that are not active currently then we cannot assign a project
manager for these projects. So there are project with no project manager making the
participation to have a minimum value of zero.
Problem:
How can we identify which BRANCH is responsible for which PROJECT? We know that
whether the PROJECT is active or not there is a responsible BRANCH. But which branch is a
question to be answered, and since we have a minimum participation of zero between
employee and PROJECT we can‘t identify the BRANCH responsible for each PROJECT.
The solution for this Chasm Trap problem is to add another relationship between the
extreme entities (BRANCH and PROJECT)

Enhanced E-R (EER) Models

 Object-oriented extensions to E-R model
 EER is important when we have a relationship between two entities and the
participation is partial between entity occurrences. In such cases EER is used to
reduce the complexity in participation and relationship complexity.
 ER diagrams consider entity types to be primitive objects
 EER diagrams allow refinements within the structures of entity types
 EER Concepts
 Generalization
 Specialization
 Sub classes
 Super classes
 Attribute Inheritance
 Constraints on specialization and generalization
1. Generalization

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 Fundamentals of database system

 Generalization occurs when two or more entities represent categories of the same real
world object.
 Generalization is the process of defining a more general entity type from a set of more
specialized entity types.
 A generalization hierarchy is a form of abstraction that specifies that two or more entities
that share common attributes can be generalized into a higher level entity type.
 Is considered as bottom-up definition of entities.
 Generalization hierarchy depicts relationship between higher level superclass and
lower level subclass.
 Generalization hierarchies can be nested. That is, a subtype of one hierarchy can be a
super type of another. The level of nesting is limited only by the constraint of simplicity.
Example: Account is a generalized form for saving and Current Accounts

2. Specialization
 Is the result of subset of a higher level entity set to form a lower level entity set.
 The specialized entities will have additional set of attributes (distinguishing
characteristics) that distinguish them from the generalized entity.
 Is considered as Top-Down definition of entities.
 Specialization process is the inverse of the Generalization process. Identify the
distinguishing features of some entity occurrences, and specialize them into different
subclasses.

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 Reasons for Specialization

 Attributes only partially applying to superclasses
 Relationship types only partially applicable to the superclass
In many cases, an entity type has numerous sub-groupings of its entities that are meaningful
and need to be represented explicitly. This need requires the representation of each subgroup
in the ER model. The generalized entity is a superclass and the set of specialized entities will
be subclasses for that specific Superclass.
Example: Saving Accounts and Current Accounts are Specialized entities for the generalized
entity Accounts. Manager, Sales, Secretary: are specialized employees.
3. Subclass/Subtype
 An entity type whose tuples have attributes that distinguish its members from tuples of the
generalized or Superclass entities.
 When one generalized Superclass has various subgroups with distinguishing features
and these subgroups are represented by specialized form, the groups are called
subclasses.
 Subclasses can be either mutually exclusive (disjoint) or overlapping (inclusive).
 A single subclass may inherit attributes from two distinct superclasses.
 A mutually exclusive category/subclass is when an entity instance can be in only one of
the subclasses.
E.g.: An EMPLOYEE can either be SALARIED or PART-TIMER but not both.
 An overlapping category/subclass is when an entity instance may be in two or more
subclasses.
E.g.: A PERSON who works for a university can be both EMPLOYEE and a
STUDENT at the same time.

4. Superclass /Supertype
 An entity type whose tuples share common attributes. Attributes that are shared by
all entity occurrences (including the identifier) are associated with the supertype
 Is the generalized entity

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