Question

What do you understand by the concept of weak entity used in data modelling? Explain the relevance of owner entity type, partial key and identifying relationship in the context of such modelling.

Answer 1

Weak Entity Types Entity Types, which do not have identifier (or key attributes) of their own are, called weak entity types. Such entity types are identified but being related to specific entities from another entity type in combination with some of their attribute values. These other entity types are called identifying or owner entity type.

Accordingly, the relationship type that relates a weak entity type to its owner is called identifying relationship of the weak entity.
A weak entity type always has a total participation constraint (existence dependency) with respect to its identifying relationship because it cannot be identified without its owner entity e.g., a voucher may be accompanied by a set of support documents such as bills, issued by other parties to the transaction, details of which need to be stored. Such SUPPORT DOCUMENT entity type which is used to keep track of support documents attached to each voucher via $1:N$ relationship is a weak entity.

This is because they are identified as distinct entities only after determining the particular voucher. A weak entity type normally has a partial key, which is a set of attribute that can uniquely identify weak entities that are related to the same owner entity. Assuming that two support documents of a voucher do not have the same document id, the said id can be good partial key. Otherwise a composite attribute of all the weak entity attributes will be the partial key.