Improving database design through the analysis of relationships

Much of the work on conceptual modeling of databases involves the use of an entity-relationship model in which binary relationships appear as associations between two entities. Relationships involving more than two entities are considered rare and, therefore, have not received adequate attention. Uniform treatment of relationships should ease the burden on designers by allowing them to extract more information from a real-world situation and express it properly in a conceptual design. Extensive research has been done in this realm and numerous design techniques have been developed over the years. Dey, Storey and Barron (1999) present their work and contributions to ER Modeling techniques to refine and improve the design of databases. For our first forum discussion, your task is to respond the following questions on the work proposed by the authors: 1. Outline the principal goals of the work presented by the authors. 2. What are the design implications identified in this study? 3. Discuss the characteristics of Functional, Partial Functional and General Relationships. 4. Discuss the characteristics of symmetric and asymmetric recursive relationships. 5. Outline the process of converting a conceptual model to a relational model. 6. How do you evaluate the overall quality of the paper? Your answers will be graded on the depth of understanding demonstrated in your discussion. Little credit will be given for simply repeating what the authors have said. I am interested in your critical analysis of the article. Cite all references used. This includes any information that you get from the Web. Do not forget to enclose any direct quotations in quotation marks. Follow the APA Citation and Reference Style. Click on the APA Style Reference Manual link on main course web page for examples.