Understanding Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERD) in Systems Analysis
Learn about ERDs, entities, attributes, keys, and relationships in system design. Explore examples and tips for building effective ER diagrams.
Understanding Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERD) in Systems Analysis
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CSE 441: Systems Analysis & Design ERD - DATA MODELLING LAB 3 Yusuf Altunel
What is an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) ? • Identify the entities required by the business • An entity corresponds to a • Person • Place • Event • Concept • Entities have relationships • “friends” may have many “addresses” • Relationships are evaluated in both directions • “One friend may have many telephones” • or “One telephone belongs to a single friend”
Four Basic components of E-R Diagrams 1. entity: a "thing" in the real world a Book, a publisher, a customer 2. attribute: a property of an entity a Book’s Title, a customer’s name 3. key: usually one attribute identifies an entity the ISBN for a book, Account number 4. relationship: a link between two entities a book and its publisher: • publishes, published by customer who placed an order for item(s) • orders, ordered by
Entities: Examples • In a Hospital Administration System • Patient • Doctor • Operation • Medicine • ...
A member of staff in a personal system. A book in a library system A customer’s address in a sales system A customer in a sales system A National Insurance number in a payroll system A patient in a medical records system The library in a library system Look at the following list and decide which you think are likely candidates for entities * * * *
Some Data Items for each of these entities can be: 1. Name, address, date of birth 2. Book title, author, publisher 4. Name, address, credit limit 6. National Insurance number, date of birth
Attributes • A key attribute: • A special and very important type of attribute • uniquely identifies a specific entity.
Choose likely key and non-key attributes for the following entities: 1. A car in a vehicle registration system • Car’s registration number, type, model, date of manufacture 2. An employee in a payroll system • Employee number or Payroll number, Name, address, department, tax code, etc. 3. A stock item in a stock control system • Stock number, Description, amount in stock, price, etc. * * *
Tips on Building ERD • Nouns are clues to the entities of a business • Start by describing the work that is done in the project, then pull out nouns in the sentences for entities. - My address book contains adressesand telephonenumbers for both friends and businesses • Verbs and adjectives sometimes help to get relationships between entities. - Friends have adresses