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Doubt in Mapping( associations of entities)

 
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In Hibernate we used to map associated entities following
many-many
one-many
many-one
relations.

Is there any simple example based on which we can understand these relations.

with respect to students and courses.
A student has a one-many relationship with courses.
" one student can join in many courses"

with respect to courses,
A single course can contain many students.

I was seeing a database schema diagram to represent these:
There i come across a term multiplicity which confuses me:

Student --->*courses



like wise.
What is multiplicity & how we can conclude whether an association is one-many or many-one or many-many.
Your help is highly appreciated.
Regards.
 
ramya narayanan
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Any replies?
 
ramya narayanan
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The reason i've posted it that i'm a little bit confused over the term "multiplicity" associated with mapping.
If anybody could provide atleast any good links, I would appreciate it.
Regards.
 
ramya narayanan
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any links?
 
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multiplicities indicate a cardinality that may exist in the association between two objects.
You have 2 sides in an association and so you can have 2 cardinalities for one association.

To take your example with student and courses.

student (a)*--1(b) course.
This represents an association between student and course. (a) and (b) are the both sides of the association.

To talk about the side (a) you can read say : one course can contain many students. Understand one course object can be linked to several student objects. So side (a) is a one-to-many association from course to student.

To talk about the side (b) you can say : one student can attend one course.
Understand one student object can be link to only one course object.
So side (b) is a one-to-one association from student to course.


Regarding a many-to-many association it is in fact 2 one-to-many associations in both directions.

Unfortunately the hibernate website does not work at the moment for a link...

Hope it will still help
[ October 29, 2008: Message edited by: ntumba lobo ]
 
ramya narayanan
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Thanks for the reply & it was useful.
But i've a small doubt.
Now if i want to satisfy this condition:

one student can attend many courses but each course should accomodate only one student.
How will you represent the cardinality of this association?
 
ntumba lobo
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student 1--* course
 
ramya narayanan
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student(a) 1--* (b)course



So here with respect to a)
many courses contains one student(since * symbol is on course) i.e many-one relationship between course to student

With respect to b)
one student can attend many courses(since * symbol is on course) i.e. one - many relationship between student to courses .
Is it right?
please clarify.
 
ramya narayanan
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sorry,
student-->*courses
With respect to a)
one course contains one student only i.e. one-one association between course and student.
Is it right?
 
ramya narayanan
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Any replies ?
 
ntumba lobo
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student-->*courses



In my example student -- course it was a bi-directional association.

In your case student-->*course is a uni-directional association
from student to course that is read as one student can have many courses.
Understand one student object can be linked to many course objects.

Usually when I talk about associations I always precise from object1 to object2 to remove any ambiguities.
[ October 30, 2008: Message edited by: ntumba lobo ]
 
ramya narayanan
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If it is a bi-directional association , then whatever i've specified above is it right?
 
ntumba lobo
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can you precise which association you are talking about ?
 
ramya narayanan
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If there is a bi-directional association between student & courses it will look like this

student(a) 1-->* (b)courses ( one student can enroll in many courses, but each course should contain only one student)


So here with respect to a)
one course can contains one student only i.e. one-one association between course and student.


With respect to b)
one student can attend many courses(since * symbol is on course) i.e. one - many relationship between student to courses .
Is it right?
please clarify.
 
ntumba lobo
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that is right !
 
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