5/27/23, 5:05 PM ER Model Study Notes

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ER Model Study Notes

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By Priya Upadhyay | Updated : September 26th, 2021

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ER Modeling: Entity-Relationship model (ER model) in software engineering is an abstract way to

describe a database. Describing a database usually starts with a relational database, which
stores data in tables.

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Relationship

An association among entities

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Relationship Set

An association of entity sets

Entity: Anything that exists and can be distinguished/ real world object which can be
distinguished from other objects.

Entity Set: A group of similar entities

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

Each entity set has a key.
Can be mapped to a relation easily

Strong Entity Set: An entity set that has a primary key is termed a strong entity set.

Weak Entity Set: An entity set may not have sufficient attributes to form a primary key. Such an
entity set is termed a weak entity set. For a weak entity set to be meaningful, it must be
associated with another entity set, called the identifying or owner entity set. Every weak entity
must be associated with an identifying entity i.e., the weak entity set is said to be existence
dependent on the identifying entity set.

Attribute: Properties that describe an entity or we can say attributes are descriptive properties
possessed by each member of an entity set and each attribute has a domain.

There are many types of attributes

Composite Attribute: Attributes which can have component attribute. e.g., a composite attribute
name, with component attributes First_Name, Middle_Name and Last_Name.

Derived Attribute: The value for this type of attribute can be derived from the values of other
related attributes or entities. For instance, let us say that the customer entity set has an attribute
Loans_Held, which represents how many loans a customer has from the bank. We can derive the
value for this attribute by counting the number of loan entities associated with that customer.

Descriptive Attribute: If a relationship set has also some attributes associated with it, then we
link these attributes to that relationship set. e.g., consider a relationship set depositor with entity
sets customer and account. We could associate the attribute Access_Date to that relationship to
specify the most recent date on which a customer accessed an account.

Single Valued Attribute: Attribute which has only one value, e.g., the Employee_Number attribute
for a specific Employee_entity refers to only one employee number.

Multi Valued Attribute: Attributes which can have 0, 1 or more than 1 values. An employee entity
set with the attribute Phone_Number. An employee may have zero, one or several phone
numbers and different employees may have different numbers of phones.

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Prime Attributes: Attributes which are part of some candidate key.

Non-Prime Attributes: Attributes which are not part of any candidate key.

Notations/Shapes in ER Modeling

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Mapping Cardinalities / Cardinality Ratio / Types of Relationship: Expresses the number of

entities to which another entity can be associated via a relationship set. For a binary relationship
set R between entity sets A and B, the mapping cardinality must be one of the following:

One to One: An entity in A is associated with at most one entity in B and an entity in B is
associated with at most one entity in A.
One to Many: An entity in A is associated with any number (zero or more) of entities; in B.
An entity in B, however, can be associated with at most one entity in A.

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Many to Many: An entity in A is associated with any number (zero or more) c entities in B
and an entity B is associated with any number (zero or more) of entities in A.

Specialization: Consider an entity set person with attributes name, street and city, A person may
be further classified-as one of the following: Customer, and Employee. Each of these person
types is described by a set of attributes 1 at includes all the attributes of entity set person plus
possibly additional attributes. The process of designating subgroupings within an entity set is
called specialization.

The specialization of person allows us to distinguish among persons according to whether they
are employees or customers,

The refinement from an initial entity set into successive levels of entity subgroupings represents
a top-down design process in which distinctions are made explicitly.

Generalization: Basically generalization is a simple inversion of specialization. Some common

attributes of multiple entity sets are chosen to create higher level entity set. If the customer
entity set and the employee entity set are having several attributes in common, then this
commonality can be expressed by generalization.

Here, person is the higher level entity set and customer and employee are lower level entity sets.
Higher and lower level entity sets also may be designated by- the terms super class and
subclass, respectively.

Aggregation: Aggregation is used when we have to model a relationship involving entity set and
a relationship set. Aggregation is an abstraction through which relationships are treated as
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higher level entities.

Integrity Constraints: Necessary conditions to be satisfied by the data values in the relational
instances so that the set of data values constitute a meaningful database.

There are four types of integrity constraints

Domain Constraint: The value of attribute must be within the domain.

Key Constraint: Every relation must have a primary key.

Entity Integrity Constraint: Primary key of a relation should not contain NULL values.

Referential Integrity Constraint: In relational model, two relations are related to each other over
the basis of attributes. Every value of referencing attributes must be NULL or be available in the
referenced attribute.

OTHER TOPICS

Introduction to Databases
ER-model
Relational model
Database Design
File organization
Transactions and Concurrency Control

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Shalini Shaw Mar 18, 2019

Thanks sir

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Sagar Pidatala Sep 26, 2019

Thanks mam

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Nitesh Tiwari Sep 26, 2019

Thanks ...you are helping us for our preparation , we are very thankful to you.

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Learn Technical Language Sep 27, 2019

Easy to understand thanks

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TÆrîqùë Réýåz Sep 28, 2019

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Chirag Shah Oct 5, 2019

If any student need to have study materials then do message on chiragbest420@gmail.com

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Aishwarya Gupta Oct 8, 2019

What are weak entities?

A Having primary key as a combined attribute

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5/27/23, 5:05 PM ER Model Study Notes

B Having no such combination of attributes that can serve as primary key

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Ruchi 24680 Mar 16, 2020

Can you provide the books for the preparation

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Hari Prasath Apr 10, 2020

This notes enough to study for exam

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Girish Oct 16, 2021

Pravin Thakor

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