Advance Database

Management System
Unit 1 .The Extended Entity Relationship Model and Object Model
Dhanashree Huddedar

Index

The ER Model revisited

Motivation for complex data types

User defined abstract data types and structured types

Subclasses and Superclasses

Inheritance

Specification and Generalisation

Relationship types of degree higher than two

The ER Model revisited

Conceptual design: (ER Model is used at this
stage.)

What are the entities and relationships in the enterprise?

What information about these entities and relationships

should we store in the database?

What are the integrity constraints or business rules that hold?

A database `schema in the ER Model can be represented

pictorially (ER diagrams).

An ER diagram can be mapped into a relational schema.

ER Model Basics
Entity: Real-world object distinguishable from other
objects.
An entity is described using a set of attributes.
Entity Set: A collection of similar entities. E.g., all
employees.

All entities in an entity set have the same set of attributes

Each entity set has a key.

Each attribute has a domain.

ER Model Basics
continued
Key and key attributes:
Key: a unique value for an entity
Key attributes: a group of one or more attributes that uniquely
identify an entity in the entity set

Super key, candidate key, and primary key

Super key: a set of attributes that allows to identify and entity

uniquely in the entity set

Candidate key: minimal super key

There can be many candidate keys

Primary key: a candidate key chosen by the designer

Denoted by underlining in ER attributes

name

ER Model Basics

ssn

lot

continued
name
ssn

lot
Employees

Employees

since

dname
did

Works_In

budget
Departments

supervisor

subordinate

Reports_To

Relationship: Association among two or more entities. e.g., Jack works

in Pharmacy department.

Relationship Set: Collection of similar relationships.

A set of relationships of similar type is called a relationship set. Like entities, a

relationship too can have attributes. These attributes are calleddescriptive
attributes.

Same entity set could participate in different relationship sets, or in

different roles in same set.

Mapping

since
name
ssn

Consider Works_In: An
employee can work in
many departments; a
dept can have many
employees.

dname
lot

Employees

did

Manages

budget

Departments

In contrast, each dept

has at most one
manager, according to
the key constraint on
Manages.

1-to-1

1-to Many

Many-to-1

Many-to-Many

Motivation for complex data types

Most relational DBMS support only a few data types.

Recent years have seen an increasing number of technological and

economical developments that affect the way in which database
systems are used.

Data warehousing, data mining, geographicaland other information

systems, e.g. on the internet, have added new requirements with
respect to data modelling and processing performance.

more complex applicationssuch as engineering design, medical

information systems, and telecommunicationsrequire additional
concepts if we want to model them with greater accuracy.

Many business applications require large amounts of complex data such

as images, audio, and video.

The need to integrate complex data with simple data drives the demand
for object database technology.

User defined abstract data types and structured

types

The concept of user-defined abstract data types is relatively recent

A data type can be consideredabstractwhen it is defined in terms of

operations on it, and its implementation is hidden

Programming language they are called structures, in data

structure theory they are called abstract data types (ADT's), while in
the marketplace they are referred to as user-defined data types.

A benefit of information hiding is increased reliability and integrity of

the object

The Enhanced Entity-Relationship

(EER) Model
Enhanced ER (EER) model
Created to design more accurate database
schemas
Reflect the data properties and constraints more
precisely
More complex requirements than traditional
applications
It adds more semantic clarity to design
Minimizes Null values

Subclasses and Superclasses

EER model includes all modeling concepts of
the ER model
In addition, EER includes:
Subclasses and superclasses
Specialization and generalization
Category or union type
Attribute and relationship inheritance

Subclasses and Superclasses

An entity type may have additional meaningful subgroupings of
its entities
Example: EMPLOYEE may be further grouped into SECRETARY,
ENGINEER, MANAGER, TECHNICIAN, SALARIED_EMPLOYEE,
HOURLY_EMPLOYEE,
Each of these groupings is a subset of EMPLOYEE entities
Each is called a subclass of EMPLOYEE
EMPLOYEE is the superclass for each of these subclasses

These are called superclass/subclass relationships.

Example: EMPLOYEE/SECRETARY, EMPLOYEE/TECHNICIAN

Subclasses and Superclasses

Continued

These are also called IS-A relationships (SECRETARY IS-A EMPLOYEE,

TECHNICIAN IS-A EMPLOYEE, ).

An entity that is member of a subclass represents the same

real-world entity as some member of the superclass
The Subclass member is the same entity in a distinct specific role
An entity cannot exist in the database merely by being a member
of a subclass; it must also be a member of the superclass
A member of the superclass can be optionally included as a
member of any number of its subclasses
Example: A salaried employee who is also an engineer belongs to the two
subclasses ENGINEER and SALARIED_EMPLOYEE

Attribute Inheritance in
Superclass / Subclass Relationships
An entity that is member of a subclass inherits
all attributes of the entity as a member of the
superclass
It also inherits all relationships

Specialization (Top Down design)

Is the process of defining a set of subclasses of a
superclass
The set of subclasses is based upon some distinguishing
characteristics of the entities in the superclass
Example: {SECRETARY, ENGINEER, TECHNICIAN} is a
specialization of EMPLOYEE based upon job type.
May have several specializations of the same superclass
Example: Another specialization of EMPLOYEE based in
method of pay is {SALARIED_EMPLOYEE,
HOURLY_EMPLOYEE}.
Superclass/subclass relationships and specialization can be
diagrammatically represented in EER diagrams
Attributes of a subclass are called specific attributes. For
example, TypingSpeed of SECRETARY
The subclass can participate in specific relationship
types. For example, BELONGS_TO of HOURLY_EMPLOYEE

Example of a Specialization

Generalization (Bottom- up
design)
The reverse of the specialization process
Several classes with common features are generalized
into a superclass; original classes become its
subclasses
Example: CAR, TRUCK generalized into VEHICLE; both
CAR, TRUCK become subclasses of the superclass
VEHICLE.
We can view {CAR, TRUCK} as a specialization of VEHICLE
Alternatively, we can view VEHICLE as a generalization of CAR
and TRUCK

Constraints on Specialization and

Generalization
Two other conditions apply to a specialization/generalization:
Disjointness Constraint:
Specifies that the subclasses of the specialization must be disjointed (an
entity can be a member of at most one of the subclasses of the
specialization)
Specified by d in EER diagram
If not disjointed, overlap; that is the same entity may be a member of
more than one subclass of the specialization
Specified by o in EER diagram

Completeness Constraint:
Total specifies that every entity in the superclass must be a member of
some subclass in the specialization/ generalization
Shown in EER diagrams by a double line
Partial allows an entity not to belong to any of the subclasses
Shown in EER diagrams by a single line

Constraints on Specialization and

Generalization (3)
Hence, we have four types of specialization/generalization:
Disjoint, total
Disjoint, partial
Overlapping, total
Overlapping, partial

Note: Generalization usually is total because the superclass is

derived from the subclasses.

Example of disjoint partial

Specialization

Specialization / Generalization Hierarchies,

Lattices and Shared Subclasses
A subclass may itself have further subclasses
specified on it
Forms a hierarchy or a lattice
Hierarchy has a constraint that every subclass
has only one superclass (called single
inheritance)
In a lattice, a subclass can be subclass of more
than one superclass (called multiple inheritance)

 In a lattice or hierarchy, a subclass inherits attributes not only of

its direct superclass, but also of all its predecessor superclasses
A subclass with more than one superclass is called a shared
subclass
Can have specialization hierarchies or lattices, or generalization
hierarchies or lattices
In specialization, start with an entity type and then define
subclasses of the entity type by successive specialization (top
down conceptual refinement process)
In generalization, start with many entity types and generalize
those that have common properties (bottom up conceptual
synthesis process)
In practice, the combination of two processes is employed

Specialization / Generalization
Lattice Example (UNIVERSITY)

Categories (UNION TYPES)

All of the superclass/subclass relationships we have
seen thus far have a single superclass
A shared subclass is subclass in more than one
distinct superclass/subclass relationships, where each
relationships has a single superclass (multiple
inheritance)
Superclasses represent different entity types
Such a subclass is called a category or UNION TYPE

 Example: Database for vehicle registration, vehicle

owner can be a person, a bank (holding a lien on a
vehicle) or a company.
Category (subclass) OWNER is a subset of the union
of the three superclasses COMPANY, BANK, and
PERSON
A category member must exist in at least one of its
superclasses
Note: The difference from shared subclass, which is
subset of the intersection of its superclasses (shared
subclass member must exist in all of its superclasses).

Example of categories
(UNION TYPES)

Important Questions
1. Define the following terms: entity, attribute, attribute value, relationship instance,
composite attribute, multivalued attribute, derived attribute, complex attribute, key
attribute, and value set (domain).
2. What is an entity type? What is an entity set? Explain the differences among an
entity, an entity type, and an entity set.
3. What is meant by a recursive relationship type? Give some examples of recursive
relationship types.
4. When is the concept of a weak entity used in data modelling?
5. What is a subclass? When is a subclass needed in data modelling?
6. Define the following terms: superclass of a subclass, superclass/subclass
relationship, IS-A relationship, specialization, generalization, category, specific
(local) attributes, and specific relationships.
7. Discuss the mechanism of attribute/relationship inheritance. Why is it useful?
8. Discuss the two main types of constraints on specializations and generalizations.
9. What is the difference between a specialization hierarchy and a specialization
10.lattice?