Updated: January 25.

2005

Designing E/R Diagrams

Christoph F. Eick: Designing E/R Diagrams 1

Conceptual Data Models

Conceptual data models provide languages to describe conceptual schemas. Conceptual schemas are used to describe the classes of objects that occur in an application area, their properties, their relationships, and the constraints that hold with respect to those classes of objects. Center on what kind of objects a database contains and not on how these objects are stored ( Internal Schema) and not on how these objects are represented / displayed to a person that accesses the database ( External Schema).

Christoph F. Eick: Designing E/R Diagrams

Conceptual Data Models --What are they good for?

As a database design tool formalizing the information requirements of the end users As a documentation tool for databases (to help programmers, especially those that have to update the database) As a data model of a database management system (only very few experimental systems exist) As a tool to describe domain ontologies (terminology and concepts in a UoD) As a tool of system analysis
Christoph F. Eick: Designing E/R Diagrams 3

Person name
Is-insured

Entity Type Attribute

Relationship Type Weak Entity Type Identifying Relationship Key Attribute Partial Key

(n,m)

Entities of type X participate at least n, at most m times in relationship R; * indicates .

Entity type X is a subtype of type Y

Wedding

T1

T2

occurred

Type T1 and T2 are overlapping; an entity can belong to both T1 and T2; default is disjoint

phone# to
T1

Multi-valued Attribute Derived Attribute

ssn
from ------amount

Optional Attribute T2

T3

T3=T2 T1

E/R Model Symbols for COSC 3480

(1,1)

UGrad
gre

ssn
Student name
(1,1))

salary

mentor
(0,25) (0,2)

Grad
home

employs
(0,30) (0,*) (0,*)

(0,*)

took
(0,*)

Department name

Semester
grade

Course title Cou#

semesterid

took-not-a-set: -2.5 Other Errors: -1.5 (or -3-4 if major)

University Problem Final03 COSC 3480

Exam1 Fall 2005 Problem

Design a good entity-relationship diagram that describes the following objects in a university application: students, departments, sections taught in the present and future, and courses. Departments have a name that uniquely identifies the department. Students are identified by a unique social security number, zero, one or multiple e-mail addresses, and an optional gpa (new students do not have a gpa yet). Courses have a unique course number and a course title. Courses are offered in one or more sections at a particular time. Sections are identified by the time they are offered (e.g. 10:30-noon TUTH) and by the course they are associated with. Additionally sections are characterized by the class room the section is taught in. Only information concerning sections that are taught in the present or in the future is stored in the database. Students take a course in a particular semester and receive a grade for their performance. Sometimes students take the same course again in a different semester. There are no limits on how many courses a student can complete, and on how many students completed a particular course. Each student is associated with a least one department. Some students are graduate students that are additionally characterized by their most recent GRE-score. Some graduate students work for a department and receive a salary for their services. Each department employs at most 75 graduate students; graduate students are not allowed to work for multiple departments.
Christoph F. Eick: Designing E/R Diagrams 6

University Problem Exam105

salary
(0,1)

E-mail

gre

ssn
Student name
(1,*)

Grad
(0.*)

employs assoc
(0,75)

(0,*)

gpa
title Cou#

took
(0,*)

Department name

(0,*)

Semester
grade

Course
(0,*)

semesterid
(1,1) took-not-a-set: -1.5 Section not weak: -2 Other Errors: -0.5--1 if minor -23 if major

offered
Section

Time-offered

classroom

name

Month
from (0,*) (0,*) to

Sal
birthd
(0,*)

ssn
name Player

name
city Team
Home

(25,*)

contr

Visit

(0,*)
Contract set viol 3, Other: -2

(0,*)
(0,*) pos

play

played-in.

(1,1)

(18,*)

pos
score

Game

Date
Game#

Solution Problem6 Exam0 Spring 2003

Christoph F. Eick: Designing E/R Diagrams 8

Identifying Keys and Relationships for Entity Types

Each entity type that is not subtype of another entity type needs: Case1: Normal Entity Type (single rectangle) Case2: Weak Entity Type (double rectangle)
1. 2. 3.
1. 2. A single attribute (straight line) or A set of attributes or

that uniquely identifies the instances of the entity type

A set of relationships (double diamond) or A set of relationships or a single attribute (dotted line) or A set of relationships and a set of attributes (dotted line)

Remark: min-max cardinalities for weak entity types for their participation in identifying relationships have to be (1,1)!!
Christoph F. Eick: Designing E/R Diagrams 9

ssn name
(0,*)

Male

occurred
(1,1)

husband wife

Person

(0,*)

Female

Wedding

(0,*)

(0,*)

Is-insured

Company

location amount to from

name

E/R Diagram for Multi-Weddings

Valid E/R Diagrams

An E/R diagram is valid if and only if: It is syntactically correct (e.g. specifies all key constraints,) It specifies the entity types, relationship types, attribute types, and subtype relationships necessary to satisfy all information requirements. It does not specify any invalid constraints.

Christoph F. Eick: Designing E/R Diagrams

11

Priorities when Choosing Between Valid E/R Diagrams

1. Express all constraints (you can express!) 2. Use and do not change terminology and class structure of the application domain 3. Keep it simple (avoid defining entity types that do not serve any purpose) 4. Avoid redundancy (but derived attributes are okay)!

Christoph F. Eick: Designing E/R Diagrams

12

 A Quite Bad E/R Diagrams

gpa

department
(0,*)

Name
worksfor
(0,*)
(0,*)

gender ssn

Person
wife husband

Company

salary

(0,*)

(0,*)

takes
(0,*)

is-marriedto

Section
time
Christoph F. Eick: Designing E/R Diagrams

S#

Course

C#
13

Example: Too many Entity Types / Dont use Foreign Keys

Example: Persons as well as animals can be insured P# Name
(0,*)

name ssn

Person
(0,*)

isinsured

(0,*)

Company

Boss-ssn

Animal
A#
Christoph F. Eick: Designing E/R Diagrams

Bad E/R Diagram!

14

E/R Diagram Design Typical Errors

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Missing Constraints Unexpressed Constraints due to bad design Every entity type needs a key Attribute associated with the wrong entity type (relationship type) Relationships are sets! No partial participation in relationships! Missing existence dependencies (use subclasses) Invalid constraints Using Subtypes for n:1 relationships; using relationships when subtypes should be used. 10. When defining relationships: Too general entity types for participating entities 11. Too many entity types 12. Using foreign keys instead of relationships 15
Christoph F. Eick: Designing E/R Diagrams

Other Issues in E/R Design

1. No relationships of relationships --- solution: create an entity type that represent instances of the relationship (or use aggregation as discussed in the textbook) 2. value or entity type --- solution: choose entity type if it helps expressing constraints; otherwise, use value-type.

Christoph F. Eick: Designing E/R Diagrams

16

University E/R Design Problem

Design a good entity-relationship diagram that describes the following objects in an university application: students, instructors, professors, and courses. Students are subdivided into graduate and undergraduate students. Students take a course in a particular semester and receive a grade for their performance. Sometimes students take the same course again in a different semester. There are no limits on how many courses a student can take, and on how many students completed a particular course. Each graduate student has exactly one advisor, who must be a professor, whereas each professor is allowed to be the advisor of at most 20 students. Courses have a unique course number and a course title. Students and professors have a name and a unique ssn; students additionally have a gpa; moreover, graduate students have a GRE-score, and undergraduate students have a single or multiple majors. Professors can be students and take courses, but graduate students cannot be undergraduate students. Indicate the cardinalities for each relationship type; assign roles (role names) to each relationship if there are ambiguities! Use sub-types, if helpful to express constraints!
Christoph F. Eick: Designing E/R Diagrams 17

gre
major

Grad Ugrad

(0,1)

advises

(0,20) Professor

gpa

ssn
name Person

Student
(0,*)

grade
(0,*)

took
(0,*)

Semester

Course

title
semesterid

Cou#

Enrolls-not-a-set: -4 Student must be ugrad or grad: -1 Other Errors: -2 (or 3 if quite major)

University Problem (slightly different from Exam003)

number company

Cred-Card
(0,*)

Problem 1 Exam1 Fall03

B
(1,1)
(1,1) (0,*)

phone#

ssn addr

A
tr#
day_ made (0,1)

(0,300)

Client

discount

Gold_Cl. Hotel
address
G#

Transaction
(1,50) D

day

Grading: Minor Error: -1 Medium Error: -2 Major Error: -3 or 4 0-4 points if too many errors

(1,1)

Ho#
(1,*)

Reservation
(1,1) to rate Res#

Date

(1,*)

#total

#avail (0,*) (0,*) E

from

Category
(0,*)

room-type
A:=guaranteed; B:=has_transaction; C:=for_hotel; D:=consists_of; E:=for_category; F=avail-rooms; G=total-rooms; modified on Feb. 3, 2004

name

Aggregation
Used when we have to model a relationship involving (entity sets and) a relationship set.
Aggregation allows us to treat a relationship set as an entity set for purposes of participation in (other) relationships.

ssn
Employees

lot

Monitors

until

started_on pid
Projects pbudget

since did

dname

budget
Departments

Sponsors

Aggregation vs. ternary relationship: Monitors is a distinct relationship, with a descriptive attribute. Also, can say that each sponsorship is monitored by at most one employee.
20

Christoph F. Eick: Designing E/R Diagrams

NFL E/R Design --Ungraded Homework --- due: Th., Jan. 27,2005
Design an Entity-Relationship Diagram that models the following objects and relationships in the world of football (NFL): teams, players, games, managers and contracts. Each (NFL-) team has a unique team name, and a city it plays in. Each person being part of the NFL-world has a unique ssn and a name. Additionally, for players their weight, height, position and birth dates are of importance. Players have a contract with at most one team and receive a salary for their services, and teams have at least 24 and at most 99 players under contract. Each team has one to three managers; managers can work for at most 4 teams and receive a salary for each of their employments. Players cannot be managers. A game involves a home-team and visitingteam; additionally, the day of the game, and the score of the game are of importance; teams play each other several times in a season (not on the same day!). Moreover, for each game played we like to know which players participated in the game and how many minutes they played. Indicate the cardinalities for each relationship type; assign roles (role names) to each relationship if there are ambiguities! Use sub-types, if helpful to express constraints!
Christoph F. Eick: Designing E/R Diagrams 21