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A Practical Automated Transformation of Entity Relationship Models to Relational Models

Authors:
Gregor Grambow
Simon Ruttmann

Keywords: Entity Relationship; ER Model; Relational Model; Database; Editor

Abstract:
Creating conceptual database schemata via Entity Relationship (ER) diagrams is a prevalent way of modeling. However, these models are not directly compatible with the relational model used in SQL databases. Over the decades, various theoretic approaches for transforming ER models to relational models have been proposed. However, this did not lead to the creation of editors capable of such transformations. Modern editors either have no transformation facilities, or do not use the ER model proposed by Peter Chen but rather provide somehow enhanced database diagrams. Thus, conceptual schemata have to be transformed manually to technical ones, which is time consuming and error-prone. To ounteract this, we propose a transformation from ER models to relational ones that focuses on practical applicability and operational semantics. Further, the approach enables the original ER model as well as prevalent extensions. To prove the applicability of this approach we have created a graphical editor capable of flexibly modeling ER diagrams and automatically transforming them to relational models.

Pages: 5 to 12

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2023

Publication date: March 13, 2023

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4332

ISBN: 978-1-68558-056-8

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Dates: from March 13, 2023 to March 17, 2023