Dependent entity
A dependent entity is an entity whose identification or existence depends on a related owner entity and cannot be fully determined independently.
Grokking Relational Database Design
An entity whose identification depends on a related owner entity and typically cannot be uniquely identified by its own attributes alone.
- How it is used
- Refines E-R diagrams by deciding whether dependent entities should use strong or weak representations.
- How deep it goes
- Explains dependency, composite and partial keys, conversions, and design trade-offs; stops short of database-specific implementation syntax.
- Examples
- Uses movie and ticket, review, purchase_product, and user_address to compare weak-entity choices and consequences.
- What you can do after
- Evaluate whether an entity should be weak and select an appropriate composite or inherited key representation.
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.NET in Action, Second Edition
A dependent entity is an entity whose existence or identity depends on a principal entity.
- How it is used
- Models ratings that belong to books in an EF Core relational catalog.
- How deep it goes
- Explains navigation properties and foreign-key conventions, but notes that code-first schemas do not enforce one-to-one relationships at database level.
- Examples
- Uses Book and Rating classes, with BookId linking each rating to its book.
- What you can do after
- Apply EF Core conventions to model a dependent entity and its relationship to a principal.
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Related concepts
- composite keyuses · A composite key is a key formed from multiple attributes or values whose combination identifies or uniquely distinguishes a record or item.
- strong entityuses · A strong entity is an entity that can exist independently and be uniquely identified without another entity.
- join tableincludes · A join table is a relational database table whose rows store key-based associations between records in two other tables, commonly representing a many-to-many relationship.
- entitykind of · An entity is a distinct, identifiable person, object, event, or concept represented as a unit in a data, software, or semantic model.
- Angular componentcontrasts with · An Angular component is a class with metadata and a template that defines a view and its associated behavior in an Angular application.
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