a statment that defines or constrains some aspect of the business.
Is intended to assert business structure or to control or influence the behavior of the business
Term
a word or phrase taht has a specific meaning for the business
Fact
an association between two or more terms
Data Names should
relate to business, not technical (HW or SW) characteristics
be meaningful
be unique
be readable
be composed of words taked from an approved list
be repeatable
follow a standard syntax
E-R Model
Entity-Relationship model.a logical representation of the data for an organization or for a business are using entities for categories of data and relationships for associations between entities
E-R Diagram (ERD)
Entity-Relationship Diagram.a graphical representation of an entity-relationship model.
Entity
a person, place, object, event, or concept in the user environment about which the organization wishes to maintain data
Entity Type
a collection of entities that share common properties or characteristics
Entity Instance
a single occurence of an entity type
Strong Entity Type
an entity that exists independently of other entity types
Weak Entity Type
an entity type whose existence depends on some other entity type
Identifying Owner
the entity type on which the weak entity type depends
Identifying Relationship
the relationship between a weak entity type and its owner
Attribute
a property or characteristic of an entity or relationship type that is of interest to the organization
Required Attribute
an attribute that must have a value for every entity (or relationship) instance with which it is associated
Optional Attribute
an attribute that may not have a value for every entity (or relationship) instance with which it is associated.
Composite Attribute
an attribute that has meaningful component part (attributes)
Simple Attribute
(or Atomic).
an attibute that cannot be broken down into smaller components that are meaningful to the organization
Multivalued Attribute
an attribute that may take on more than one value for a given entity (or relationship) instance
Derived Attribute
an attribute whose values can be calculated from related attribute values
Identifier
an attribute (or combination of attributes) whose value distinguishes instances of an entity type
Composite Identifier
an identifier that consists of a composite attribute
Relationship Type
a meaningful association between (or among) entity types
Relationship Instance
an association between (or among) entity instances where each relationship instance associates exactly one entity instance from each participating entity type.
Associative Entity
an entity type that associates the instances of one or more entity types and contains attributes that are peculiar to the relationship between those entity instances
Degree
the number of entity types that participate in a relationship
Unary Relationship
a relationship betwen instances of a single entity type
Binary Relationship
a relationship between the instances of two entity types
Ternary Relationship
a simultaneous relationship among the instances of three entity types
Cardinality Constraint
specifies the number of instances of one entity that can (or must) be associated with each instnace of another entity
Minimum Cardinality
the minimum number of instances of one entity that may be associated with each instance of another entity
Maximum Cardinality
the maximum number of instances of one entity that may be associated with each instance of another entity
Time Stamp
a time value that is associated with a data value, often indicating when some event occurred that affected the data value