Entity Types, Entity Sets, Attributes, and Keys-1




The ER model describes data as entities,relationships, and attributes. In this Section  we introduce the concepts of entities and their attributes. We discuss entity types and key attributes in other Section Then, in next Section  we specify the initial conceptual design of the entity types for the COMPANY database. Relationships are described in next topic.

  • Entities and Attributes

Entities and Their Attributes. The basic object that the ER model represents is an entity, which is a thing in the real world with an independent existence. An entity may be an object with a physical existence (for example, a particular person, car, house, or employee) or it may be an object with a conceptual existence (for instance, a company, a job, or a university course). Each entity has attributes—the particular properties that describe it. For example, an EMPLOYEE entity may be described by the employee’s name, age, address, salary, and job. A particular entity will have a value for each of its attributes. The attribute values that describe each entity become a major part of the data stored in the database.

Entity Types, Entity Sets, Attributes, and Keys-1

Figure shows two entities and the values of their attributes. The EMPLOYEE entity e1 has four attributes: Name, Address, Age, and Home_phone; their values are ‘John Smith,’ ‘2311 Kirby, Houston, Texas 77001’, ‘55’, and ‘713-749-2630’, respectively. The COMPANY entity c1 has three attributes: Name, Headquarters, and President; their values are ‘Sunco Oil’, ‘Houston’, and ‘John Smith’, respectively. Several types of attributes occur in the ER model: simple versus composite, singlevalued versus multivalued, and stored versus derived. First we define these attribute types and illustrate their use via examples. Then we discuss the concept of a NULL value for an attribute.

Entity Types, Entity Sets, Attributes, and Keys-1

Composite versus Simple (Atomic) Attributes:. Composite attributes can be divided into smaller subparts, which represent more basic attributes with independent meanings. For example, the Address attribute of the EMPLOYEE entity shown in Figure  can be subdivided into Street_address, City, State, and Zip, 3 with the values ‘2311 Kirby’, ‘Houston’, ‘Texas’, and ‘77001.’ Attributes that are not divisible are called simple or atomic attributes. Composite attributes can form a hierarchy; for example, Street_address can be further subdivided into three simple component attributes: Number, Street, and Apartment_number, as shown in Figure  The value of a composite attribute is the concatenation of the values of its component simple attributes. Composite attributes are useful to model situations in which a user sometimes refers to the composite attribute as a unit but at other times refers specifically to its components. If the composite attribute is referenced only as a whole, there is no need to subdivide it into component attributes. For example, if there is no need to refer to the individual components of an address (Zip Code, street, and so on), then the whole address can be designated as a simple attribute.

 

Single-Valued versus Multivalued Attributes: Most attributes have a single value for a particular entity; such attributes are called single-valued. For example, Age is a single-valued attribute of a person. In some cases an attribute can have a set of values for the same entity—for instance, a Colors attribute for a car, or a College_degrees attribute for a person. Cars with one color have a single value, whereas two-tone cars have two color values. Similarly, one person may not have a college degree, another person may have one, and a third person may have two or more degrees; therefore, different people can have different numbers of values for the College_degrees attribute. Such attributes are called multivalued. A multivalued attribute may have lower and upper bounds to constrain the number of values allowed for each individual entity. For example, the Colors attribute of a car may be restricted to have between one and three values, if we assume that a car can have three colors at most.

Stored versus Derived Attributes. In some cases, two (or more) attribute values are related—for example, the Age and Birth_date attributes of a person. For a particular person entity, the value of Age can be determined from the current (today’s) date and the value of that person’s Birth_date. The Age attribute is hence called a derived attribute and is said to be derivable from the Birth_date attribute, which is called a stored attribute. Some attribute values can be derived from related entities; for example, an attribute Number_of_employees of a DEPARTMENT entity can be derived by counting the number of employees related to (working for) that department.

 

NULL Values. In some cases, a particular entity may not have an applicable value for an attribute. For example, the Apartment_number attribute of an address applies only to addresses that are in apartment buildings and not to other types of residences, such as single-family homes. Similarly, a College_degrees attribute applies only to people with college degrees. For such situations, a special value called NULL is created. An address of a single-family home would have NULL for its Apartment_number attribute, and a person with no college degree would have NULL for College_degrees. NULL can also be used if we do not know the value of an attribute for a particular entity—for example, if we do not know the home phone number of ‘John Smith’ in Figure The meaning of the former type of NULL is not applicable, whereas the meaning of the latter is unknown. The unknown category of NULL can be further classified into two cases. The first case arises when it is known that the attribute value exists but is missing—for instance, if the Height attribute of a person is listed as NULL. The second case arises when it is not known whether the attribute value exists—for example, if the Home_phone attribute of a person is NULL.

 

Complex Attributes. Notice that, in general, composite and multivalued attributes can be nested arbitrarily. We can represent arbitrary nesting by grouping components of a composite attribute between parentheses () and separating the components with commas, and by displaying multivalued attributes between braces { }. Such attributes are called complex attributes. For example, if a person can have more than one residence and each residence can have a single address and multiple phones, an attribute Address_phone for a person can be specified as shown in Figure  Both Phone and Address are themselves composite attributes.

 



Frequently Asked Questions

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Ans: The company is organized into departments. Each department has a unique name, a unique number, and a particular employee who manages the department. We keep track of the start date when that employee began managing the department. A department may have several locations.  A department controls a number of projects, each of which has a unique name, a unique number, and a single location view more..
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Ans: SQL permits a variety of functions on character strings. Read to know about them. view more..
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Ans: Reason to rename a relation is a case where we wish to compare tuples in the same relation. view more..
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Ans: Entities and Their Attributes. The basic object that the ER model represents is an entity, which is a thing in the real world with an independent existence. An entity may be an object with a physical existence (for example, a particular person, car, house, or employee) view more..
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Ans: A database usually contains groups of entities that are similar. For example, a company employing hundreds of employees may want to store similar information concerning each of the employees. These employee entities share the same attributes, but each entity has its own value(s) for each attribut view more..
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Ans: An entity type DEPARTMENT with attributes Name, Number, Locations, Manager, and Manager_start_date. Locations is the only multivalued attribute. We can specify that both Name and Number are (separate) key attributes because each was specified to be unique view more..
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Ans: There are several implicit relationships among the various entity types. In fact, whenever an attribute of one entity type refers to another entity type, some relationship exists. For example, the attribute Manager of DEPARTMENT refers to an employee who manages the department; the attribute view more..
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Ans: Select clause uses. view more..
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Ans: Entity types that do not have key attributes of their own are called weak entity types. In contrast,regular entity types that do have a key attribute—which include all the examples discussed so far—are called strong entity types view more..
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Ans: If some cardinality ratio or dependency cannot be determined from the requirements, the users must be questioned further to determine these structural constraints view more..
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Ans: The individual entity instances in an entity set and the individual relationship instances in a relationship set. In ER diagrams the emphasis is on representing the schemas rather than the instances. view more..
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Ans: The UML methodology is being used extensively in software design and has many types of diagrams for various software design purposes. We only briefly present the basics of UML class diagrams here, and compare them with ER diagrams view more..
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Ans: we defined the degree of a relationship type as the number of participating entity types and called a relationship type of degree two binary and a relationship type of degree three ternary view more..
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Ans: SQL offers the user some control over the order in which tuples in a relation are displayed. view more..
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Ans: The rapid advancement of the use of information technology (IT) in industry, government, and academia raises challenging questions and problems regarding the protection and use of personal information. Questions of who has what rights to information about individuals for which purposes become more important as we move toward a world in which it is technically possible to know just about anything about anyone. view more..
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Ans: Sensitivity of data is a measure of the importance assigned to the data by its owner, for the purpose of denoting its need for protection. Some databases contain only sensitive data while other databases may contain no sensitive data at all. view more..
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Ans: Whenever a person or a group of persons needs to access a database system, the individual or group must first apply for a user account. The DBA will then create a new account number and password for the user if there is a legitimate need to access the database. view more..
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Ans: The database administrator (DBA) is the central authority for managing a database system. The DBA’s responsibilities include granting privileges to users who need to use the system and classifying users and data in accordance with the policy of the organization view more..




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