ITC114 Tutorial 2

How to create an ERD

The process: Create a detailed narrative of the organisations description of operations; Identify the business rules based on the narrative of operations; Identify the main entities based on the business rules: o o o Entities are objects that you need to capture data about; They are usually described by nouns in business rules; Create a list of the possible entities;

Entities have relationships between them that describe the interaction between those entities: o o o Determine the relationships between each of the entities; Show the relationship between each entity; Establish the cardinality of each relationship, remembering to look at both ends of the relationship; Show the cardinality for each relationship; Determine if any side of a relationship is optional or mandatory; Show the optionality of each relationship

o o o

Resolve any M:N relationships with a bridging table; Review the initial ERD to ensure that it accurately describes the business rules; Identify the attributes that adequately describe each entity; Identify the primary key for each entity; Ensure that foreign keys are placed correctly in tables; Revise the ERD, entities, attributes, keys and relationships to ensure that they comply with the business rules