The ERA Data Model Entities, Relations and Attributes课件.pptVIP

The ERA Data Model: Entities, Relations and Attributes Specifies each Attribute (property or data field) by its Data Type or permitted set of values. Specifies each Entity, Class or Record type in terms of its component attributes, data members or fields, respectively. Specifies each Relation type in terms of its component Entity Types or Classes, plus other attributes that depend on the associated entities. Three important questions: Can Relation components be nested relation instances? Can Relation instances have attributes or properties? Can an ERA Data Model be specified by a diagram? Relation Examples (1) A personnel Employee record: This represents one employee by a unique primary key for him/her as a Person (or its Employee subclass); It also associates that individual employee with values of other specific attributes or properties like age, position, start date, etc. A marriage license: This is an object or instance which associates two persons who play the roles of bride and groom with other attributes that depend on both of them, such as marriage time and place. The persons are identified by their primary key values. These identifiers are ‘foreign keys’ because they identify other ‘Person’ objects, not this relationship object itself. Question: What is the ‘arity’ of each relation above? Relation Examples (2) A Parents-to-Child relation: Each instance associates two persons (in parent roles) with one of their children (one person in the child role). Parents-to-FamilyUnit P2FU and FamilyUnit-to-Child FU2C relations: Each instance of P2FU associates two Persons with 0 or more children; The parents are identified by foreign keys (with distinct names). The children are identified by a (possibly empty) set of foreign keys. Child fkeys may refer to the child subclass of Person or to Persons in their ‘child’ role. Questions: What is the ‘arity’ of each relation above? What is the role of each associated individual? How can ‘roles’ distinguish the