  Data modeling is a process of developing a model to design and develop a data
system that supports an organization s various business processes. A conceptual
data model represents a technology-independent specification of structure of
data to be stored within a database. The model aims at providing richer
expressiveness and incorporating a set of semantics to (a) support the design,
control, and integrity parts of the data stored in data management structures
and (b) coordinate viewing of connections and ideas on a database. The
described structure of the data is often represented in an entity-relationship
(ER) model, which was one of the first data-modeling techniques and is likely
to continue to be a popular way of characterizing entity classes, attributes
and relationships. This paper is an attempt to examine the basic ER modeling
notions to analyze the concepts to which they refer as well as ways to
represent them. In such a mission, we apply a new modeling methodology
(thinging machine; TM) to ER in terms of its fundamental building constructs,
representation entities, relationships and attributes. The goal of this venture
is to further the understanding of data models and enrich their semantics.
Three specific contributions to modeling in this context are incorporated: (a)
using the TM model s five generic actions to inject processing in the ER
structure; (b) relating the single ontological element of TM modeling (i.e., a
thing/machine or thimac) to ER entities and relationships; and (c) proposing a
high-level integrated, extended ER model that includes structural and
time-oriented notions (e.g., events or behavior).
