Databases Illuminated, 4th Edition

3.8 Sample ER Diagrams

FIGURE 3.13 shows an ER diagram incorporating many of the entities and relationships discussed in this chapter for the University example. To construct an ER diagram, we can begin with a scenario, a brief description of what information about the mini-world the database should contain.

For a database for a university, let us assume that we want to keep information about students, the classes they are enrolled in, the faculty who teach those classes, and the textbooks used. We also want to represent departments that employ the faculty members, the faculty member who chairs each department, and teaching evaluations made of the faculty.

For this example, we will use the traditional method of showing cardinality and participation ...