2.Conceptual_design.pptVIP

Conceptual Design and the ER Model How to Build a DB System? Systems Development Life Cycle Requirements Analysis Collect and Analyze the business requirements Conceptual Design Design a conceptual model (schema), e.g., ER model Logical Design Translate ER model into relational model (schema) Normalization: Eliminate redundancy Implementation Build the database and write application programs Maintenance Use, maintain, and “tune” the database system Physical Design? Mainly concerned with performance. Similar tasks as in tuning The ER Model The Entity-Relationship (ER) model, introduced by Peter Chen (1976), has been the most popular conceptual model Basic idea: A database can be modeled as: a collection of entities (things), and relationships among entities Result is an ER Diagram (or Schema), which is easy to explain to users and can be used as a communication tool between the designer and users Sample ER DiagramPine Valley Furniture (Figure 3-1) Another Sample Basic ER Constructs Entity A “thing” that is distinguishable from others e.g., a book titled Modern Database Management Relationship Any entity can be related to other entities e.g., the DB book category includes the book Modern Database Management Attribute Entities and relationships are described by attributes e.g., a book has title, author, pages, and price Basic ER Notation Drawing Tools There are many We use Visio Use the stencil provided by the instructor, visio-ER-stencils Some constructs may look different E.g., identifying relationship between a weak entity type and its owner Optional constructs omitted E.g., associative entity type Entity Type vs. Instance Entity instances with common properties can usefully be classified into an entity type E.g., the book Modern Database Management is a particular instance of the generic Book entity type We model entity types, not individual instances! (Why?) Relationship Type vs. Instance Relationship instances with common properties can usefully be classified