Logical Database Design: from Conceptual to Logical Schema

Definition Logical database design is the process of transforming (or mapping) a conceptual schema of the application domain into a schema for the data model underlying a particular DBMS, such as the relational or objectoriented data model. This mapping can be understood as the result of trying to achieve two distinct sets of goals: (i) representation goal: preserving the ability to capture and distinguish all valid states of the conceptual schema; (ii) data management goals: addressing issues related to the ease and cost of querying the logical schema, as well as costs of storage and constraint maintenance. This entry focuses mostly on the mapping of (Extended) Entity-Relationship (EER) diagrams to relational databases.