Database System Design: Detailing the ER Diagram Development Process

This essay reflects on the experience of developing an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) for a database system, specifically focusing on the AutoSeller database. The author discusses their learning journey, starting from initial confusion about different ERD notations (crow's foot and Chen's) and progressing to understanding database normalization, particularly the third normal form. The essay highlights the importance of understanding dependencies (fully functional, partial, and transitive) and acknowledges initial difficulties with transitive dependency. It also emphasizes the critical role of database management system knowledge in effective ERD design. The author notes successes in identifying key attributes and avoiding many-to-many relationships, while also addressing a mistake in eliminating transitive dependency due to an initial lack of clarity on the concept. The essay concludes with a bibliography of resources used during the learning process. Desklib provides access to similar assignments and study tools for students.

Running head: DATABASE SYSTEM DESIGN
Database System Design
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

1DATABASE SYSTEM DESIGN
My experience while developing the ER Diagram was very good. I was able to
implement the ERD as per the conventional standard. I did not have good idea about database
models when I started designing the Entity Relationship Diagram. I later found out that there are
two types of ER Diagrams. The first one that I came across is crow's foot database notation and
the other one is chen's database notation. I learned about designing both kind of database models.
However, the crow's foot database notation, I think, is more effective in terms of reading and
understanding. This is because, a lot of attributes can be included in the crow's foot database
notation in a structured way. The overall space required for designing the database reduces
significantly when attribute space reduces.
After I learned about basic about the data models, then I came across the concept of
normalization. In the normalization process, I learned that most of the database can fulfill the
system requirements if all the entities are in third normal form. There is no need to normalize the
database up to BCNF. At the time when I started understanding second normal form, I realized
that having the proper knowledge about dependency is essential for normalization. Then I
learned about fully functional, partial and transitive dependency. Various books and tutorials
provided different types of examples on transitive dependency. The real life scenario of each of
those examples were different so I had issues in learning transitive dependency. However, I
learned about the transitive dependency after I started designing the ER diagram of the
AutoSeller database.
The last things that I learn during the ER Diagram designing is that having proper idea of
database management system only can allow a designer to perfectly design the ERD. There is
always room for errors in ER diagram design. However, an experienced designer would have

2DATABASE SYSTEM DESIGN
proper idea of how the database can be used for conducting the business operation and develop
the ER diagram as per that.
Almost all the basic things went right with the ER diagram designing. I was able to
identify the main attributes that are essential for operating the AutoSeller business operations.
These things went right because I practiced before designing the database of AutoSeller. Another
thing went right was that I did not include any many-to-many relationship in the database. This is
because, when I tried to implement a practice database with many-to-many relation, it could not
prevent data anomalies. After searching few blogs I came across the information that many-to-
many relationship must be divided into many-to-one and one-to-many relationships.
Only one thing went wrong while designing the ER diagram is eliminating the transitive
dependency. This happened because, the concept of transitive dependency was not clear to me. I
went through various tutorials and blogs but I could not relate the examples with AutoSeller’s
database. Then I read the basic rule of transitive dependency and started applying that idea on
each three set of attributes of every table.

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Bibliography:
Alkoshman, M. M. (2015). Unified modeling language and enhanced entity relationship: an
empirical study. International Journal of Database Theory and Application, 8(3), 215-
227.
Al-Masree, H. K. (2015). Extracting Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) from relational
database schema. International Journal of Database Theory and Application, 8(3), 15-26.
Shin, K., Hwang, C., & Jung, H. (2017). NoSQL database design using UML conceptual data
model based on Peter Chen’s framework. International Journal of Applied Engineering
Research, 12(5), 632-636.
Zhang, F., Ma, Z. M., & Cheng, J. (2016). Enhanced entity-relationship modeling with
description logic. Knowledge-Based Systems, 93, 12-32.