How would you identify attributes from a user’s requirements specification and then associate the attributes with entity or relationship types?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

In a similar way to identifying entities, we look for nouns or noun phrases in the users’
requirements specification. The attributes can be identified where the noun or noun phrase is a
property, quality, identifier, or characteristic of one of these entities or relationships. By far the
easiest thing to do when we have identified an entity (x) or a relationship (y) in the
requirements specification is to consider What information are we required to hold on x or y?
The answer to this question should be described in the specification. However, in some cases
it may be necessary to ask the users to clarify the requirements. Unfortunately, they may give
answers to this question that also contain other concepts, so that the users’ responses must be
carefully considered.
As there are generally many more attributes than entities and relationships, it may be useful to
first produce a list of all attributes given in the users’ requirements specification. As an
attribute is associated with a particular entity or relationship, remove the attribute from the list.
In this way, we ensure that an attribute is associated with only one entity or relationship type
and, when the list is empty, that all attributes are associated with some entity or relationship
type.