Database Design Using Entity-Relationship Diagrams, 3rd Edition

11 Relational Mapping and Reverse Engineering ER/EER Diagrams

DOI: 10.1201/9781003314455-11

11.1 INTRODUCTION

Throughout this book, we have developed rules for mapping entity-relationship (ER) and enhanced entity-relationship (EER) diagrams to a relational database. In this chapter, we present a summary of the mapping rules and then discuss reverse engineering—starting with the database and working backward to an ER/EER diagram. We often find databases exist without an ER/EER diagram to accompany them. The ER/EER diagram is documentation—just as computer programs require documentation, so do databases. Therefore, we have included a chapter on reverse engineering. As we did previously, for reverse engineering we present a series of steps ...