multivalued attributes converted to relationships
Date: 17 Jun 2003 01:43:25 -0700
Message-ID: <60ca69db.0306170043.4edc125d_at_posting.google.com>
Hello Database developers,
Suppose I have a limited number of entities. Say 20 distinct entity types.
At this moment of time they are not connected through any relationship,
One of this isolated Entity type has a nested and multivalued attribute.
However, this attribute happens to contain as values, all remaining entity types.
Can someone please give me a small hint, how to model this in an ER or EER drawing?
The problem is that the degree of the relationship will reach two dozens.
Hence a binary or ternary relationship is insufficient.
What I believe in faithful modeling according to software specification is that one attribute of entity type a), can have the same meaning as another entity type B).
This attribute is then converted to a binary relationship. In this case one attribute is multivalued. And also appears in 19 different entity types.
Is this possible ?
Yours Sincerely
Morten Gulbrandsen Received on Tue Jun 17 2003 - 10:43:25 CEST