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DBMS-Note-2

An Entity-Relationship Diagram (ER Diagram) is a visual representation of the structure of a database, illustrating the relationships among entity sets, which are groups of similar entities. The main components of an ER Diagram include entities (represented by rectangles), attributes (ovals), and relationships (diamonds), with various types of relationships such as one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many. Additionally, the diagram incorporates concepts like weak entities and participation types, which define how entities relate to one another within the database structure.

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4 views

DBMS-Note-2

An Entity-Relationship Diagram (ER Diagram) is a visual representation of the structure of a database, illustrating the relationships among entity sets, which are groups of similar entities. The main components of an ER Diagram include entities (represented by rectangles), attributes (ovals), and relationships (diamonds), with various types of relationships such as one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many. Additionally, the diagram incorporates concepts like weak entities and participation types, which define how entities relate to one another within the database structure.

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soumen.da.ace03
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Entity Relationship Diagram – ER

Diagram in DBMS
An Entity–relationship model (ER model) describes the structure of a
database with the help of a diagram, which is known as Entity Relationship
Diagram (ER Diagram). An ER model is a design or blueprint of a database
that can later be implemented as a database. The main components of E-R
model are: entity set and relationship set.

What is an Entity Relationship Diagram (ER


Diagram)?
An ER diagram shows the relationship among entity sets. An entity set is a
group 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. Lets have a look at a simple ER
diagram to understand this concept.

A simple ER Diagram:

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. Student entity has attributes such as Stu_Id,
Stu_Name & Stu_Addr and College entity has attributes such as Col_ID &
Col_Name.
Here are the geometric shapes and their meaning in an E-R Diagram. We will
discuss these terms in detail in the next section(Components of a ER
Diagram) of this guide so don’t worry too much about these terms now, just go
through them once.

Rectangle: Represents Entity sets.


Ellipses: Attributes
Diamonds: Relationship Set
Lines: They link attributes to Entity Sets and Entity sets to Relationship Set
Double Ellipses: Multivalued Attributes
Dashed Ellipses: Derived Attributes
Double Rectangles: Weak Entity Sets
Double Lines: Total participation of an entity in a relationship set

Components of a ER Diagram

As shown in the above diagram, an ER diagram has three main components:


1. Entity
2. Attribute
3. Relationship

1. Entity
An entity is an object or component of data. An entity is represented as
rectangle in an ER diagram.
For example: In the following ER diagram we have two entities Student and
College and these two entities have many to one relationship as many
students study in a single college. We will read more about relationships later,
for now focus on entities.
Weak Entity:
An entity that cannot be uniquely identified by its own attributes and relies on
the relationship with other entity is called weak entity. The weak entity is
represented by a double rectangle. For example – a bank account cannot be
uniquely identified without knowing the bank to which the account belongs, so
bank account is a weak entity.

2. Attribute
An attribute describes the property of an entity. An attribute is represented as
Oval in an ER diagram. There are four types of attributes:

1. Key attribute
2. Composite attribute
3. Multivalued attribute
4. Derived attribute

1. Key attribute:
A key attribute can uniquely identify an entity from an entity set. For example,
student roll number can uniquely identify a student from a set of students. Key
attribute is represented by oval same as other attributes however the text of
key attribute is underlined.

2. Composite attribute:

An attribute that is a combination of other attributes is known as composite


attribute. For example, In student entity, the student address is a composite
attribute as an address is composed of other attributes such as pin code,
state, country.

3. Multivalued attribute:
An attribute that can hold multiple values is known as multivalued attribute. It
is represented with double ovals in an ER Diagram. For example – A person
can have more than one phone numbers so the phone number attribute is
multivalued.

4. Derived attribute:
A derived attribute is one whose value is dynamic and derived from another
attribute. It is represented by dashed oval in an ER Diagram. For example –
Person age is a derived attribute as it changes over time and can be derived
from another attribute (Date of birth).
E-R diagram with multivalued and derived attributes:

3. Relationship
A relationship is represented by diamond shape in ER diagram, it shows the
relationship among entities. There are four types of relationships:
1. One to One
2. One to Many
3. Many to One
4. Many to Many

1. One to One Relationship

When a single instance of an entity is associated with a single instance of


another entity then it is called one to one relationship. For example, a person
has only one passport and a passport is given to one person.

2. One to Many Relationship

When a single instance of an entity is associated with more than one


instances of another entity then it is called one to many relationship. For
example – a customer can place many orders but a order cannot be placed by
many customers.
3. Many to One Relationship

When more than one instances of an entity is associated with a single


instance of another entity then it is called many to one relationship. For
example – many students can study in a single college but a student cannot
study in many colleges at the same time.

4. Many to Many Relationship

When more than one instances of an entity is associated with more than one
instances of another entity then it is called many to many relationship. For
example, a can be assigned to many projects and a project can be assigned
to many students.

Total Participation of an Entity set


Total participation of an entity set represents that each entity in entity set must
have at least one relationship in a relationship set. It is also called mandatory
participation. For example: In the following diagram each college must have
at-least one associated Student. Total participation is represented using
a double line between the entity set and relationship set.
Partial participation of an Entity Set
Partial participation of an entity set represents that each entity in the entity set
may or may not participate in the relationship instance in that relationship set.
It is also called as optional participation

Partial participation is represented using a single line between the entity set
and relationship set.

Example: Consider an example of an IT company. There are many


employees working for the company. Let’s take the example of relationship
between employee and role software engineer. Every software engineer is
an employee but not every employee is software engineer as there are
employees for other roles as well, such as housekeeping, managers, CEO
etc. so we can say that participation of employee entity set to the software
engineer relationship is partial.

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