Abstract
Our paper seeks to provide an analysis of ternary relationship logic with an objective of identifying whether they can be decomposed given only the constructs and constraints provided during conceptual entity relationship (ER) modeling.
Our paper investigates which ternary relationship cardinality combinations can be losslessly decomposed, which combinations preserve functional dependencies, and whether the logic involved in these processes is sufficient to provide a model which is rigorous at the physical or practical level. We show that if ternary relationships can be explicitly constrained by binary cardinalities, some ternary/binary cardinality combinations have legitimate equivalencies in a binary decomposed form, but that certain other combinations cannot be decomposed without creating additional implementation concerns.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Armstrong, W.W. (1974) “Dependency Structures of Data Base Relationships”. In Proc. IFIP Congress, 1974.
Date, CJ. An Introduction to Database Systems. Addison—Wesley Publishing Company, Menlo Park, CA., 6th Edition, 1994.
Elmasri, R., and Navathe, S. (1993). Fundamentals of Database Systems. 2nd Edition, Benjamin/Cummings, Redwood City, CA. 1993.
Hawryszyiewycz I. T. An Introduction to Systems Analysis and Design. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1988
Jones, T.H. & Song, I.Y. (1993). “Binary Imposition Rules and Ternary Decomposition”. In Proceedings of InfoScience '93, Conference on Information Science and Technology, Korea Information Science Society, Seoul, Korea, October 21–-23, 1993, pp. 267–274.
Ling, T.W. (1985b). “A Normal Form for Entity-Relationship Diagrams”. In Proceedings of 4th International Conference on the Entity-Relationship Approach (Chicago). IEEE Computer Society Press, Silver Springs, MD., 1985.
Markowitz, V.M. & Shoshani, A. (1992). “Representing Extended Entity-Relationship Structures in Relational Databases: A Modular Approach”. ACM Transactions on Database Systems, 17(3), September, 1992, pp. 423–464.
McFadden & Hoffer. Database Management. 4th Edition, Benjamin/Cummings, Redwood City, CA. 1994.
McKee, R.L. & Rodgers, J.(1992). “N-ary Versus Binary Data Modeling: a Matter of Perspective”. Data Resource Management, 3(4), Fall 1992, pp. 22–32.
Rissannen, J. (1977). “Independent Components of Relations”. ACM TODS, 2(4), December 1977.
Song, I.Y. & Jones T.H. (1993). “Analysis of Binary Relationships within Ternary Relationships in ER modeling”. In Proceedings of 12th International Conference on Entity-Relationship Approach, Dallas, TX., December, 1993, pp. 265–276.
Song, I.Y. & Jones T.H. (1995). “Ternary Relationship Strategies Based on Binary Imposition Rules”. In Proceedings of 11th Intl. Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE '95), Taipei, Taiwan, March 1995.
Song, I.Y., Jones T.H. & Park, E.K. (1993). “Binary Relationship Imposition Rules on Ternary Relationships in ER Modeling”. In Proceedings of 2nd International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, Washington, D.C., October, 1993, pp. 57–66.
Teorey, T.J. Database Modeling and Design: The Fundamental Principles. 2nd Edition. Morgan-Kauffman, 1994.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1995 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Jones, T.H., Song, IY. (1995). Binary representation of ternary relationships in ER conceptual modeling. In: Papazoglou, M.P. (eds) OOER '95: Object-Oriented and Entity-Relationship Modeling. ER 1995. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1021. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0020534
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0020534
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-60672-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48527-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive