Neela Dash

From a practical database design perspective, understanding relationship degree is vital for creating an efficient and accurate Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD), which is the blueprint for the database. While binary relationships are the easiest to implement (often directly as foreign keys in tables), higher-degree relationships require special attention. A ternary relationship (degree 3) cannot be implemented using simple foreign key pairs between two tables. Instead, it typically requires the creation of a new bridge table (or associative entity). This new table would have foreign keys pointing to the primary keys of each of the three participating entities, and it might also have its own attributes (like the date of the prescription in the doctor-patient-medicine example). Getting the degree right ensures the database can correctly store complex real-world information without loss or ambiguity.