When do we use super entity set in ERD

Question

Suppose I have a ERD for registration system which has entities like faculty and student. They have name , email in common.The sub entity form a relationship with other entities in my ERD. Both Faculty entity and student entity forms a relationship with Weak Entity(CLASS). Is it a good idea to make a super entity set(say PERSON) and making faculty and student as sub entity types? as they are both pointing to the same entity set.

Weak Entity Set (CLASS) is dependent on other entity set(COURSE)

Does the weak entity set(CLASS) inherits all the attributes from the super entity set?

I also want to know what are the pros and cons of creating a super entity set?

Your question may have an answer here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13749525/relational-database-design-multiple-user-types/13752304#13752304 — Walter Mitty, Sep 19 '16 at 10:41

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 26 '18 at 14:07

I got lost a bit in your question. However, it is better to make super and sub entities when you have more than one entity having common attributes. In such case, we make them sub-entities for a super entity having those common attributes. Something like this...

When do we use super entity set in ERD

1 Answers1