A dashed line means that the relationship is strong, whereas a solid line means that the relationship is weak. On the following diagram how do we decide that the relationship between the Room
and Class
entities is strong. Is it because Room
entity has a regular key (non-composite)?
We draw a solid line if and only if we have an ID-dependent relationship; otherwise it would be a dashed line.
Consider a weak but not ID-dependent relationship; We draw a dashed line because it is a weak relationship.
Weak (Non-Identifying) Relationship
Entity is existence-independent of other enties
PK of Child doesn’t contain PK component of Parent Entity
Strong (Identifying) Relationship
Child entity is existence-dependent on parent
PK of Child Entity contains PK component of Parent Entity
Usually occurs utilizing a composite key for primary key, which means one of this composite key components must be the primary key of the parent entity.
In entity relationship modeling, solid lines represent strong relationships and dashed lines represent weak relationships.
The relationship Room
to Class
is considered weak (non-identifying) because the primary key components CID
and DATE
of entity Class
doesn't contain the primary key RID
of entity Room
(in this case primary key of Room entity is a single component, but even if it was a composite key, one component of it also fulfills the condition).
However, for instance, in the case of the relationship Class
and Class_Ins
we see that is a strong (identifying) relationship because the primary key components EmpID
and CID
and DATE
of Class_Ins
contains a component of the primary key Class
(in this case it contains both components CID
and DATE
).
来源:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16675127/how-to-identify-a-strong-vs-weak-relationship-on-erd