数据库系统概念教材ch6 Entity-Relationship Model.pptVIP

Converting Non-Binary Relationships (Cont.) Also need to translate constraints Translating all constraints may not be possible There may be instances in the translated schema thatcannot correspond to any instance of R Exercise: add constraints to the relationships RA, RB and RC to ensure that a newly created entity corresponds to exactly one entity in each of entity sets A, B and C We can avoid creating an identifying attribute by making E a weak entity set (described shortly) identified by the three relationship sets Mapping Cardinalities affect ER Design Can make access-date an attribute of account, instead of a relationship attribute, if each account can have only one customer That is, the relationship from account to customer is many to one, or equivalently, customer to account is one to many How about doing an ER design interactively on the board?Suggest an application to be modeled. Weak Entity Sets An entity set that does not have a primary key is referred to as a weak entity set. The existence of a weak entity set depends on the existence of a identifying entity set it must relate to the identifying entity set via a total, one-to-many relationship set from the identifying to the weak entity set Identifying relationship depicted using a double diamond The discriminator (or partial key) of a weak entity set is the set of attributes that distinguishes among all the entities of a weak entity set. The primary key of a weak entity set is formed by the primary key of the strong entity set on which the weak entity set is existence dependent, plus the weak entity set’s discriminator. Weak Entity Sets (Cont.) We depict a weak entity set by double rectangles. We underline the discriminator of a weak entity set with a dashed line. payment_number – discriminator of the payment entity set Primary key for payment – (loan_number, payment_number) Weak Entity Sets (Cont.) Note: the primary key of the strong entity set is not explicitly stored with the weak entity s