Thato, being ever curious and wanting to learn more about anything and everything, decided to
try his hand at creating a UML ERD for a relational database too. You made it look so easy after all,
so he was confident he could do it too. So, he wrote some new rules about a fictional
manufacturing company and created the below ERD based on some web pages he consulted.
• Each product requires different components during the manufacturing process. A
component can be used in multiple different products.
• The quantity of each component that is used for a specific product must be stored in
the database.
• The name of each product and each component must be stored in the database.
• Each component is bought from a specific supplier, and a supplier can supply many
different components.
• The name and address of each supplier must be stored in the database.
• Each production line manufactures exactly one type of product at a time.
• A colour is allocated to each production line to make them easy to distinguish.
Based on these rules, Thato created the following UML ERD for the fictional manufacturing company:
- Product
- ProductID (PK)
- ProductName
- Component
- ComponentID (PK)
- ComponentName
- Supplier
- SupplierID (PK)
- SupplierName
- SupplierAddress
- ProductionLine
- LineID (PK)
- ProductID (FK)
- Colour
- ProductComponent
- ProductID (PK, FK)
- ComponentID (PK, FK)
- Quantity
- SupplierComponent
- SupplierID (PK, FK)
- ComponentID (PK, FK)
Thato was proud of his creation and excited to continue learning more about database design and management.