Assignment on ER Model

Exercise 1: A university database contains information about professors (identified by social

security number, or SSN) and courses (identified by courseid). Professors teach courses; each
of the following situations concerns the Teaches relationship set. For each situation, draw an
ER diagram that describes it (assuming no further constraints hold).
a. Professors can teach the same course in several semesters, and each offering must be
recorded.
b. Professors can teach the same course in several semesters, and only the most recent
such offering needs to be recorded. (Assume this condition applies in all subsequent
questions.)
c. Every professor must teach some course.
d. Every professor teaches exactly one course (no more, no less).
e. Every professor teaches exactly one course (no more, no less), and every course must
be taught by some professor.
f. Now suppose that certain courses can be taught by a team of professors jointly, but it
is possible that no one professor in a team can teach the course. Model this situation,
introducing additional entity sets and relationship sets if necessary.

Exercise 2: Consider the following information about a university database:

 Professors have an SSN, a name, an age, a rank, and a research specialty.
 Projects have a project number, a sponsor name (e.g., NSF), a starting date, an ending
date, and a budget.
 Graduate students have an SSN, a name, an age, and a degree program (e.g., M.S. or
Ph.D.).
 Each project is managed by one professor (known as the project’s principal
investigator).
 Each project is worked on by one or more professors (known as the project’s co-
investigators).
 Professors can manage and/or work on multiple projects.
 Each project is worked on by one or more graduate students (known as the project’s
research assistants).
  When graduate students work on a project, a professor must supervise their work on
the project. Graduate students can work on multiple projects, in which case they will
have a (potentially different) supervisor for each one.
 Departments have a department number, a department name, and a main office.
 Departments have a professor (known as the chairman) who runs the department.
 Professors’ work in one or more departments and for each department that they work
in, a time percentage is associated with their job.
 Graduate students have one major department in which they are working on their
degree.
 Each graduate student has another, more senior graduate student (known as a student
advisor) who advises him or her on what courses to take.
Design and draw an ER diagram that captures the information about the university. Use
only the basic ER model here; that is, entities, relationships, and attributes. Be sure to
indicate any key and participation constraints.

Exercise 3: A company database needs to store information about employees (identified by

ssn, with salary and phone as attributes), departments (identified by dno, with dname and
budget as attributes), and children of employees (with name and age as attributes).
Employees work in departments; each department is managed by an employee; a child must
be identified uniquely by name when the parent (who is an employee; assume that only one
parent works for the company) is known. We are not interested in information about a child
once the parent leaves the company.
Draw an ER diagram that captures this information.