Abstract
In the entity-relationship model, cardinality constraints are frequently used to specify dependencies between entities and relationships. They impose lower and upper bounds on the cardinality of relationships an instance of a fixed type may participate in.
However, for certain applications it is not enough to prescibe only bounds, but it is necessary to specify the exact set of permitted cardinalities. This leads to the concept of int-cardinality constraints as proposed by Thalheim [14]. Different from ordinary cardinality constraints this concept allows gaps in the sets of permitted cardinalities. Our objective is to investigate the consistency of a set of int-cardinality constraints for a database scheme, i.e. the question whether there exists a fully-populated database instance satisfying all the given int-cardinality constraints.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Buchmann, A.P., Carrera, R.S., Vazquez-Galindo, M.A.: A generalized constraint and exception handler for an object-oriented CAD-DBMS. In: IEEE conf., pp. 38–49 (1986)
Chen, P.: The Entity-Relationship Model: Towards a unified view of data. ACM TODS 1(1), 9–36 (1984)
Chen, P., Knoell, H.-D.: Der Entity-Relationship-Ansatz zum logischen Systementwurf. BI-Wissenschaftsverlag, Mannheim (1991)
Engel, K., Hartmann, S.: Constructing realizers of semantic entity relationship schemes, Preprint 95/3, Universität Rostock (1995)
Gondran, M., Minoux, N.: Graphs and algorithms. Wiley, New York (1984)
Hartmann, S.: Graph-theoretic methods to construct entity-relationship databases. In: Nagl, M. (ed.) WG 1995. LNCS, vol. 1017, pp. 131–145. Springer, Heidelberg (1995)
Hartmann, S.: Über die Charakterisierung und Konstruktion von Entity- Relationship-Datenbanken mit Kardinalitätsbedingungen, Ph.D. thesis, Universit ät Rostock (1996)
Hartmann, S.: Int-cardinality constraints in data modeling, Preprint, Universität Rostock (1998)
Lenzerini, M., Nobili, P.: On the satis_ability of dependency constraints in Entity-Relationship schemata. Information Systems 15, 453–461 (1990)
Maier, D.: The theory of relational databases. Computer Science Press, Rockville (1983)
Paredaens, J., de Bra, P., Gyssens, M., van Gucht, D.: The structure of the relational database model. Springer, Berlin (1989)
Thalheim, B.: Fundamentals of cardinality constraints. In: Pernul, G., Tjoa, A.M. (eds.) ER 1992. LNCS, vol. 645, pp. 7–23. Springer, Heidelberg (1992)
Thalheim, B.: A survey on Database Constraints, Reihe Informatik I-8, Universität Cottbus (1994)
Thalheim, B.: Fundamentals of Entity-Relationship Models. Springer, Berlin (1997)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Hartmann, S. (1998). On the Consistency of Int-cardinality Constraints. In: Ling, TW., Ram, S., Li Lee, M. (eds) Conceptual Modeling – ER ’98. ER 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1507. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-49524-6_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-49524-6_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-65189-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49524-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive