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HOW TO DRAW ENTITY RELATIONSHIP DIAGRAMS

ENTITY RELATIONSHIP DIAGRAMS (ERD) - CARDINALITY NOTATIONS

Cardinality
Cardinality specifies how many instances of an entity relate to one instance of another entity.

Ordinality is also closely linked to cardinality. While cardinality specifies the occurances of a relationship, ordinality describes the relationship as either mandatory or optional. In other words, cardinality specifies the maximum number of relationships and ordinality specifies the absolute minimum number of relationships. When the minimum number is zero, the relationship is usually called optional and when the minimum number is one or more, the relationship is usually called mandatory.

There are many notation styles that express cardinality and they are all supported by SmartDraw.

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