Improving database design through the analysis of relationships

Abstract

Much of the work on conceptual modeling involves the use of an entity-relationship model in which binary relationships appear as associations between two entities. Relationships involving more than two entities are considered rare and, therefore, have not received adequate attention. This research provides a general framework for the analysis of relationships in which binary relationships simply become a special case. The framework helps a designer to identify ternary and other higher-degree relationships that are commonly represented, often inappropriately, as either entities or binary relationships. Generalized rules are also provided for representing higher-degree relationships in the relational model. This uniform treatment of relationships should significantly ease the burden on a designer by enabling him or her to extract more information from a real-world situation and represent it properly in a conceptual design.