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An analysis of the structural validity of ternary relationships in entity relationship modeling

_ This research explores the criteria that contribute to the validity of modeling structures within the entityrelationship (ER) diagram. Our analysis yields a comprehensive set of decision rules to determine the structural validity of any ternary relationship in an ER diagram. These rules can be readily applied to real world models regardless of the complexity of the problem. They can easily be incorporated into the database modeling and designing process or extended into case tool implementations. In previous approaches only maximum cardinality constraints were used in their analysis. Here we use both maximum and minimum cardinality constraints yielding a more complete analysis of the structural validity of ternary relationship types. Our study also includes an analysis of ternary relationships and unrelated binary relationships. Previous studies only performed standalone validity evaluations of ternary relationships. In our study we evaluate the ternary relationship as part of the overall diagram and our rules address ternary relationships as they coexist with other relationships in a path structure within the model. Our approach examines the embedded binary relationships that exist between any two entities in a ternary relationship to determine the structural validity of the path containing the ternary relationship. We investigate constraining binary relationships and those properties that allow or disallow them to further define the ternary relationship. We further explore the effects of minimum cardinality constraints on constraining binary relationships and how they affect structural validity. The significant contribution of this paper is to furnish a complete set of rules based on impacts of constraining relationships, path connectivity, and cardinality constraints to determine the structural validity of an entityrelationship diagram containing binary and ternary relationships.