Chapter 2

Data models, database schemes and instances

Learn about:
• Data modeling and why data models are important
• Basic data-modeling building blocks
• What business rules are and how they influence database
design
• How the major data models evolved
• Emerging alternative data models and the need they fulfill
• How data models can be classified by their level of
abstraction
 Data Models
 Data Model: an abstraction (simple representations) of
complex real-world object or event or data structures
Useful in understanding complexities of the real-world environment
Often graphical
Data modeling is iterative and progressive
 Definition :
A set of concepts to describe the structure of a database, the
operations for manipulating these structures, and certain
constraints that the database should obey.
Data Model Structure and Constraints:
Constructs are used to define the database structure
Constructs typically include elements (and their data types) as
well as groups of elements (e.g. entity, record, table), and
relationships among such groups
Constraints specify some restrictions on valid data; these
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constraints must be enforced at all times
 Data Models (Cont…)
Data Model Operations:
These operations are used for specifying database
retrievals and updates by referring to the constructs of the
data model.
Operations on the data model may include basic model
operations (e.g. generic insert, delete, update) and user-
defined operations (e.g. compute_student_gpa,
update_inventory)
Importance of Data Models
 Facilitate interaction among the designer, the applications
programmer, and the end user
 End users have different views and needs for data
 Data model organizes data for various users
 Data model is an abstraction
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Cannot draw required data out of the data model
 Data Model Basic Building Blocks
 Entity: anything about which data are to be collected and stored
 Attribute: a characteristic of an entity
 Relationship: describes an association among entities
One-to-many (1:M) relationship
Many-to-many (M:N or M:M) relationship
One-to-one (1:1) relationship
 Constraint: a restriction placed on the data

Business Rules
 Descriptions of policies, procedures, or principles within a specific
organization
 Apply to any organization that stores and uses data to generate information
 Must be in writing and kept up to date
 Must be easy to understand and widely disseminated
 Describe characteristics of data as viewed by the company

Discovering
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Sources of business rules:
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
Discovering Business Rules (Cont..)
Written documentation
Procedures
Standards
Operations manuals
Direct interviews with end users

The process of identifying and documenting business rules is

essential to database design for several reasons:
Standardize company’s view of data
Communications tool between users and designers
Allow designer to understand the nature, role, and scope of
data
Allow designer to understand business processes
Allow designer to develop appropriate relationship
participation rules and constraints
 Translating Rules into Data Model Components
 Business rules set the stage for the proper identification
of entities, attributes, relationships, and constraints. In
the real world, names are used to identify objects. If the
business environment wants to keep track of the
objects, there will be specific business rules for them.
As a general rule, a noun in a business rule will
translate into an entity in the model, and a verb (active
or passive) associating nouns will translate into a
relationship among the entities. For example, the
 business rule “a customer may generate many invoices”
contains two nouns (customer and invoices) and a verb
 (generate) that associates the nouns. From this
business rule, you could deduce that:
Translating Rules into Data Model Components
 Nouns translate into entities
 Verbs translate into relationships among entities
 Relationships are bidirectional
 Two questions to identify the relationship type:
 How many instances of B are related to one instance of A?
 How many instances of A are related to one instance of B?

Naming Conventions
 Naming occurs during translation of business rules to data model
components
 Names should make the object unique and distinguishable from other
objects
 Names should also be descriptive of objects in the environment and
be familiar to users
 Proper naming:
Facilitates communication between parties
Promotes self-documentation
 THE EVOLUTION OF DATA MODELS
The quest for better data management has led to several models
that attempt to resolve the file system’s critical shortcomings.
These models represent schools of thought as to what a database
is, what it should do, the types of structures that it should employ,
and the technology that would be used to implement these
structures. Perhaps confusingly, these models are called data
models just as are the graphical data models that we have been
discussing. This section gives an overview of the major data
models in roughly chronological order. You will discover that
many of the “new” database concepts and structures bear a
remarkable resemblance to some of the “old” data model
concepts and structures. Table 2.1 traces the evolution of the
major data models.
 Evolution of Data Models:

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 Hierarchical Model:
• Developed in 1960 to manage large amount of data of Apollo rocket
which landed on moon in 1969.
• Basic logical structure is represented by an upside-down “tree”
• It contains Levels or Segments. Segment is equivalent to file system’s
record type.
• The top layer is perceived as parent of the segment directly beneath
it.
• It depicts a set of one-to-many (1:M) relationships between parent and
its children segments.

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Network Model:
• Created to represent complex data relationships more effectively than
the hierarchical model, to improve database performance and to
impose database standard.
• Database Task Group(DBTG) was created to define database
standard specifications.
• Final DBTG report contains 3 crucial database components
• Schema: which defines conceptual organization of the entire
database as viewed by database admin.
• Subschema: defines the portion of the database seen by the
application program that actually produce the desired information
from the data contained within the database.
• Data management language : defines the environment in which
data can be managed. DBTG specified 3 components:
• Schema Data Definition Language: Define schema components by DB admin.
• Subschema DDL: defines database components that will be used by

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In the following network model, CUSTOMER, SALESREP,
PRODUCT, INVOICE, PAYEMNT and INV_LINE represent
record types.

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 Relational Model:
Introduced in 1970 by E.F.Codd(of IBM) in his paper “A Relational
Model of Data for Large Shared Databanks”.
• Its foundation is a mathematical concept known as relation.

• In this relation(sometimes called table) is composed of intersecting

rows and columns.
• Each row is called a tuple.
• Each column represents an attribute.
• It is implemented through a very sophisticated relational database
management system(RDBMS).
• RDBMS hide the complexity of relational model from user.

• RDBMS manages all the physical details, while user sees the DB as
a collection of tables in which data is stored.
• Relational Diagram: Representation of entities, Attributes &

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13 Relational table stores collection of related entities.
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 SQL- based Relational Model:
 SQL-based relational database application involves 3 parts:
End-user interface :Allows end user to interact with the data
Set of tables stored in the database
Each table is independent from another
Rows in different tables are related based on common values in
common attributes
SQL “engine”:Executes all queries

The Entity Relationship Model

 Widely accepted standard for data modeling
 Introduced by Chen in 1976
 Graphical representation of entities and their relationships in a
database structure
 Entity relationship diagram (ERD)
Uses graphic representations to model database components
Entity is mapped to a relational table
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 The Entity Relationship Model (Cont…)
 Entity instance (or occurrence) is row in table
 Entity set is collection of like entities
 Connectivity labels types of relationships
 Relationships are expressed using Chen notation
 Relationships are represented by a diamond
 Relationship name is written inside the diamond
 Crow’s Foot notation used as design standard in this book

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The Object-Oriented (OO) Model
 Data and relationships are contained in a single structure known
as an object
 OODM (object-oriented data model) is the basis for OODBMS
Semantic data model
 An object:
Contains operations
Are self-contained: a basic building-block for autonomous structures
Is an abstraction of a real-world entity
 Attributes describe the properties of an object
 Objects that share similar characteristics are grouped in classes
 Classes are organized in a class hierarchy
 Inheritance: object inherits methods and attributes of parent class
 UML based on OO concepts that describe diagrams and symbols
Used to graphically model a system
Object/Relational and XML
Extended relational data model (ERDM)
Semantic data model developed in response to increasing
complexity of applications
Includes many of OO model’s best features
Often described as an object/relational database
management system (O/RDBMS)
Primarily geared to business applications
The Internet revolution created the potential to exchange
critical business information
In this environment, Extensible Markup Language (XML)
emerged as the de facto standard
Current databases support XML
XML: the standard protocol for data exchange among
systems and Internet services
Emerging Data Models: Big Data and NoSQL
Big Data
Find new and better ways to manage large amounts of Web-
generated data and derive business insight from it
Simultaneously provides high performance and scalability at
a reasonable cost
Relational approach does not always match the needs of
organizations with Big Data challenges

NoSQL databases
Not based on the relational model, hence the name NoSQL
Supports distributed database architectures
Provides high scalability, high availability, and fault tolerance
Supports very large amounts of sparse data
Geared toward performance rather than transaction
consistency
Degrees of Data Abstraction
 Database designer starts with abstracted view, then adds details
 ANSI Standards Planning and Requirements Committee (SPARC)
Defined a framework for data modeling based on degrees of
data abstraction (1970s):
External
Conceptual
Internal

The External Model

 End users’ view of the data environment
 ER diagrams represent external views
 External schema: specific representation of an external view
Entities
Relationships
Processes
Constraints
 The External Model (Cont…)
 Easy to identify specific data required to support each business
unit’s operations
 Facilitates designer’s job by providing feedback about the model’s
adequacy
 Ensures security constraints in database design
 Simplifies application program development
The Conceptual Model
 Represents global view of the entire database
 All external views integrated into single global view:
conceptual schema
 ER model most widely used
 ERD graphically represents the conceptual schema
 Provides a relatively easily understood macro level view of
data environment
 Independent of both software and hardware
Does not depend on the DBMS software used to implement
the model
Does not depend on the hardware used in the
implementation of the model
Changes in hardware or software do not affect database
design at the conceptual level
The Internal Model
 Representation of the database as “seen” by the DBMS
Maps the conceptual model to the DBMS
 Internal schema depicts a specific representation of an
internal model
 Depends on specific database software
Change in DBMS software requires internal model be
changed
 Logical independence: change internal model without
affecting conceptual model
 The Physical Model
 Operates at lowest level of abstraction
Describes the way data are saved on storage media such as
disks or tapes
 Requires the definition of physical storage and data access
methods
 Relational model aimed at logical level
Does not require physical-level details
 Physical independence: changes in physical model do not affect
internal model
Summary
 A data model is an abstraction of a complex real-world data environment
 Basic data modeling components:
 Entities
 Attributes,
 Relationships
 Constraints
 Business rules identify and define basic modeling components
 Hierarchical model
 Set of one-to-many (1:M) relationships between a parent and its
children segments
 Network data model
 Uses sets to represent 1:M relationships between record types
 Relational model
 Current database implementation standard
 ER model is a tool for data modeling
 Complements relational model
Summary
 Hierarchical model
 Set of one-to-many (1:M) relationships between a parent and its
children segments
 Network data model
 Uses sets to represent 1:M relationships between record types
 Relational model
 Current database implementation standard
 ER model is a tool for data modeling
 Complements relational model
 Object-oriented data model: object is basic modeling structure
 Relational model adopted object-oriented extensions: extended relational
data model (ERDM)
 OO data models depicted using UML
 Data-modeling requirements are a function of different data views and
abstraction levels
 Three abstraction levels: external, conceptual, and internal