Entity-Relationship Modeling for Academic Database Design

📅 2025-06-26 — Session: Entity-Relationship Modeling for Academic Database Design

🕒 00:00–01:45
🏷️ Labels: Entity-Relationship, Database Design, Normalization, Academic System
📂 Project: Dev
⭐ Priority: MEDIUM

Session Goal

The session aimed to explore and refine the modeling of entity-relationship diagrams (ERDs) for an academic database system, focusing on the representation of entities like Cursada, Estudiante, Materia, and Cuatrimestre.

Key Activities

• Formal Representation: Discussed the formal representation of entities, attributes, and relationships in ERDs, with a focus on cardinalities and the depiction of weak and strong entities.
• Entity Modeling: Explored the conceptualization of Cursada as either a weak entity or part of a ternary relationship, evaluating the implications for database design.
• Design Analysis: Analyzed the pros and cons of modeling Cuatrimestre as an entity and the nature of the Cursa and Dicta relationships.
• Schema Development: Developed relational schemas from DER models, examining the impact of different conceptual designs on the resulting tables.

Achievements

• Clarified the representation of Cursada as a weak entity and its implications for database normalization.
• Developed a comprehensive ERD model for the academic system, including all relevant entities and relationships.
• Proposed a simplified model for the Dicta relationship, considering temporal traceability and teacher assignment.

Pending Tasks

• Further validation of the proposed ERD models with real-world data scenarios.
• Exploration of additional normalization techniques to optimize database performance.