COLLEGE OF COMPUTER STUDIES AND MULTIMEDIA ARTS

CCS0021L
(INFORMATION MANAGEMENT)

EXERCISE

3
DATA MODELING USING ENHANCED E-R MODEL

Student Name / Group

Franz Millan P. De Vera
Name:
Name Role
Members (if Group):

Section: TN21
Professor: Ms. Beau Gray Habal
I. PROGRAM OUTCOME/S (PO) ADDRESSED BY THE LABORATORY EXERCISE
a. Understand best practices and standards and their applications. [PO: M]

II. COURSE LEARNING OUTCOME/S (CLO) ADDRESSED BY THE LABORATORY EXERCISE

 Analyze business rules and translate them into user requirements.. [CLO: 2]

III. INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOME/S (ILO) OF THE LABORATORY EXERCISE

At the end of this exercise, students must be able to:

 Use the Oracle Data Modeler to create the Enhanced ER Diagrams given the rules of the
organization

 Identify the entities that will be clustered

IV. BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Logical Data Model

Enhanced Entity-Relationship Model

The Enhanced Entity-Relationship model is the extension of the original ER model with new
modeling constructs. The new modeling constructs introduced in the EER model are supertype/subtype
relationships.

Enhanced ER model = ER model + hierarchical relationships

Supertype and Subtype

Supertype is a generic entity type that has a relationship with one or more subtypes.

A subtype is a subgrouping of the entities in an entity type that is meaningful to the organization.
Subtypes inherit the attributes and relationships associated with their supertype.

Consider the entity type STUDENT (supertype), which has two subtypes UNDERGRADUATE and
POSTGRADUATE.

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 Generalization and Specialization
Generalization is the process of minimizing the differences between entities by identifying common
features. It can also be defined as the process of defining a generalized entity type from a set of entity
types.

Specialization is the process of identifying subsets of an entity set (the superset) that share some
distinguishing characteristics. In specialization the supertype is defined first and the subtypes are
defined next.

Figure 3.1 Generalization and Specialization

Constraints on Specialization and Generalization

1. Disjointness constraint allows us to specify whether an instance of a supertype may

simultaneously be a member of two or more subtypes.
a. Overlap refers to the fact that the same entity instance may be a member of more than
one subtype of the specialization.
b. Disjoint refers to the fact that the same entity instance may be a member of only one
subtype of the specialization.

2. Completeness constraint addresses the question whether an instance of a supertype must

also be a member of at least one subtype.
a. Total completeness refers to the fact that every entity instance in the supertype must
be a member of some subtype in the specialization.
b. Partial completeness refers to the fact that an entity instance in the supertype need not
be a member of any subtype in the specialization.

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V. GRADING SYSTEM / RUBRIC

Criteria Descriptions Points

Disjointness (overlap or disjoint) The constraint allows us to specify whether 20
an instance of a supertype may
simultaneously be a member of two or
more subtypes.

Completeness The constraint addresses the question 20

whether an instance of a supertype must
also be a member of at least one subtype
Supertype The generic entity type that has a 20
relationship with one or more subtypes.
Subtype The subgrouping of the entities in an entity 20
type that is meaningful to the organization.
Subtypes inherit the attributes and
relationships associated with their
supertype.

Generalization/Specialization The subgrouping of the entities in an entity 20

type that is meaningful to the organization.
Subtypes inherit the attributes and
relationships associated with their
supertype.
Total 100%

VI. LABORATORY ACTIVITY

Overview

Consider an online auction database system in which members (buyers and sellers) participate in
the sale of items. The data requirements for this system are summarized as follows:

 The online site has members who are identified by a unique member id and are described by
an email address, their name, a password, their home address, and a phone number.
 A member may be a buyer or a seller. A buyer has a shipping address recorded in the
database. A seller has a bank account number and routing number recorded in the database.

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  Items are placed by a seller for sale and are identified by a unique item number assigned by
the system. Items are also described by an item title, an item description, a starting bid price,
bidding increment, the start date of the auction, and the end date of the auction.
 Items are also categorized based on a fixed classification hierarchy. In this online auction,
there are only two subcategories namely Computer and Non Computer.
 Buyers make bids for items they are interested in. A bidding price and time of bid placement is
recorded. The person at the end of the auction with the highest bid price is declared the winner
and a transaction between the buyer and the seller may proceed soon after.
 Buyers and sellers may place feedback ratings on the purchase or sale of an item. The
feedback contains a rating between 1 and 10 and a comment. Note that the ratings are placed
on a completed transaction by the buyer or seller of the item in the transaction.

Task 1

Construct an enhanced entity-relationship diagram for the auction database.

Task 2

Draw an enhanced entity-relationship diagram using the Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler
based from your answer in Task 1.

Logical

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 Relational

VII. QUESTION AND ANSWER

1. State two conditions that indicate when a designer should consider using supertype/subtype
relationships.

A Database designer should consider using supertype/subtypes when either or both of the
following conditions are present:

 When there are attributes that applies to some instances of an entity Note: but not all
 When the instances of a subtype involved in a relationship unique to that particular subtype.

2. What is attribute inheritance? Why is it important?

Attribute inheritance is where subtype entities inherit values from the attributes of the supertype
entities and also an instance of a subtype is also an instance of the supertype. It is the same thing
in object-oriented programming but here it is applied in data modeling. Attribute inheritance is
important because this supports the concepts of hierarchical classification.

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VIII. REFERENCES

 Young, M. (2010). Oracle Data Modeling and Relational Database Design, Vol. 1 Student Guide,
Oracle.
 Sumathi, S. (2007). Fundamentals of Relational Database Management Systems, Springer.

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