Identifying Entities and Relationships › Identifying Relationships Among Entities › General Guidelines for Identifying Relationships

General Guidelines for Identifying Relationships

To identify the relationships between data entities, perform the following steps:

1. Using the list of business functions, identify relationships between entities as verbs. In those instances where no verb adequately expresses the relationship, join the two entity names to form a name for the relationship. For example, the DEPARTMENT and EMPLOYEE entities could be connected through the relationship BELONGS TO or through the relationship DEPT-EMPLOYEE.
2. List these key verbs between the entities they connect and draw a diamond around each one.
3. Associate entities with the appropriate relationships by connecting them with lines.
4. Label each relationship to show whether it is 1-1, 1-M, or M-M.

Entity-relationship diagram for Commonweather Corporation

The following diagram illustrates a simple entity-relationship diagram for the Commonweather Corporation.