Sunday, 12 October 2014

Lesson 12 Strong & weak entity

Database design using E-R Model
A database which conforms to an ER diagram can be represented by a set of tables.

Strong & weak entity
These are two type of entity mainly dependent entity (also called weak entity) and independent entity also (called regular entity and weak entity).


The dependent entity is the one whose existence dependents on another entity.  An entity set is called weak entity set if its existence depends on the existence of another weak entity or any other strong entity. A weak entity set does not have sufficient attributes to form a primary key.

Note => A weak entity set represented by double outline rectangle in ER diagram.

Consider an entity type marks which represent the marks obtained by student. Now the existence of marks dependence upon the existence of entity type student.

&Note
A weak entity set can be converted to strong entity set by adding appropriate attributes.

Let’s take real life situation to understand type of entity. Suppose a student says ‘Swati’ can have many instance of marks say eng_marks; sci_marks; sst_marks etc. related to it if instance ‘Swati’. If Swati is deleted then all the entity marks dependent upon swati will also removed.

Marks is dependent (weak) entity that is dependent on entity student.

For example
The entity Employee & Student are strong entity they have the primary keys Emp_no & admin no 


&Note
An entity set which has primary key termed as a strong entity set



your review is very important to us for better quality.
Please Comment 

No comments:

Post a Comment