In an Entity-Relationship (ER) model, an entity set that possesses a primary key composed entirely of its own intrinsic attributes is classified as a:
A Strong (or regular) Entity Set has a primary key capable of uniquely identifying all its constituent entity instances without depending on an owner entity set.
In ER modeling, what is an 'Identifying Relationship'?
An identifying relationship (represented by a double diamond) associates a weak entity set with its parent strong entity set.
How is the primary key of a weak entity set constructed in the relational schema?
The primary key of a weak entity relation is formed by taking the primary key of the identifying entity set as a foreign key and combining it with the weak entity's discriminator.
In Extended ER (EER) modeling, the process of defining a set of subclasses from an existing superclass based on distinguishing characteristics is known as:
Specialization is a top-down design process that identifies specialized subsets (subclasses) of a general entity set (superclass).
The bottom-up design process of synthesizing multiple entity sets that share common properties into a single generalized superclass is called:
Generalization is the reverse, bottom-up abstraction process where common attributes of lower-level entity sets are combined into a higher-level superclass entity.