Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERDs)

Presented By- Sandilian A.

 Agenda

1. Why we need ERD?

2. Information about ERD
3. ERD Notations
4. Methodology of ERD
5. Example for ERD
 Why we need ERD ?

•ERDs are a major data modelling tool.

•Help to organize the data in your project into
entities and define the relationships between the
entities
•This process has proved to enable the analyst to
produce a good database structure
•The data can be stored and retrieved in a most
efficient manner
 Information about ERD

• Entity & Entity Sets

• Relationship & Relationship Sets

• Attributes
 Entity & Entity Sets
Entity
An entity is an object that exists and is
distinguishable from other objects.
An entity may be concrete (a person or a
book, for example) Or abstract (like a
holiday, a concept, an idea or convenience).

Example:
John with NO. 001-111-10001 is an entity, as
he can be uniquely identified as one
particular person in the universe.
 Entity & Entity Sets
Entity Sets
An entity set is a set of entities of the same
type (e.g., all persons having an account at
a bank).

Example:

All employees of a company may constitute

an entity set  employee

All departments may belong to an entity set

Dept
 Relationship & Relationship Sets

Relation Ship
A relationship captures how two or more
entities are related to one another
A data relationship is a natural association
that exists between one or more entities
Example:
One person (P1,P2,P3,P4) can sit on only
one chair at any point of time.
 Relationship & Relationship Sets

Relation Ship Sets

A relationship set is a set of relationships of
the same type.

Example:
A person can sit on several chairs at different
point of time.
 Relationship & Relationship Sets

Type of Relationship

1. One to One Relationship

2. One to Many Relationship
3. Many to One Relationship
4. Many to Many Relationship
 Type of Relationship

1.One to One
Example:
One person (P1,P2,P3,P4) can sit on only one chair at any point of time.
And also one chair (C1,C2,C3,C4) can accommodate a maximum of one
person at any given time.
 Type of Relationship

2.One to Many
Example:
One organization(O1,O2,O3) can have many employees but one
employee (E1,E2,E3,E4,E5) can work only for one organization.
 Type of Relationship

3.Many to One
Example:
Many employees (E1,E2,E3…) can work for
only one department but one department (D1,D2,D3) can have many
employees.
 Type of Relationship

4.Many to Many
Example:
One student (S1,S2,S3,S4) is enrolled for many courses (C1,C2,C3,C4)
and one course is enrolled by many students
 Attributes

Attributes
Each entity instance in an entity set is described
by a set of attributes that describe their qualities,
characteristics or properties that are relevant and
the values of the attributes.
Example

An employee in an employee entity set is likely to

be described by its attributes like employee
number, name, date of birth, etc.
 ERD Notations

An entity is an object or concept about which

business user wants to store information.

A weak entity is dependent on another entity to exist

Example :
Bank branch depends upon bank name for its
existence. Without bank name it is impossible to
identify bank branch uniquely.

Attributes are the properties or characteristics of

an entity.

A key attribute is the unique, distinguishing

characteristic of the entity.
For example, an employee’s employee number
might be the employee’s key
attribute.
A derived attribute is based on another attribute.
example:
An employee’s monthly salary is based on the
employee’s basic salary and house rent allowance.

A multivalued attribute can have more than one value.

Example:
An employee entity can have multiple skill values.

Relationships illustrate how two entities share

information in the database structure.
 Methodology of ERD

Identify the roles, events, locations, tangible

1. Identify Entities things or concepts about which the end-users
want to store data.

Find the natural associations between pairs of

2. Find Relationships
entities using a relationship matrix.

Put entities in rectangles and relationships on

3. Draw Rough ERD
line segments connecting the entities.

Determine the number of occurrences of one

4. Fill in Cardinality entity for a single occurrence of the related
entity.
 Methodology of ERD

5. Define Primary Identify the data attribute(s) that uniquely identify

Keys one and only one occurrence of each entity.
6. Draw Key- Eliminate Many-to-Many relationships and include
Based ERD primary and foreign keys in each entity.

7. Identify Name the information details (fields) which are

Attributes essential to the system under development.
For each attribute, match it with exactly one entity
8. Map Attributes
that it describes.
9. Draw fully
Adjust the ERD from step 6 to account for entities or
attributed
relationships discovered in step 8.
ERD
10. Check Does the final Entity Relationship Diagram
Results accurately depict the system data?
 Example for ERD

A company has several departments. Each department has a

supervisor and at least one employee.

Employees must be assigned to at least one, but possibly more

departments.

At least one employee is assigned to a project, but an employee may

be on vacation and not assigned to any projects.
Example for ERD
The important data fields are the names of the departments, projects,
supervisors and employees, as well as the supervisor and employee
number and a unique project number.

Sample ERD
Thank You