The document discusses the entity relationship (ER) model used for conceptual database design. It describes the key components of an ER diagram including entities represented as rectangles, attributes described as ovals, and relationships shown as diamonds. Different types of relationships are also defined such as one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many. The ER model provides a way to design and visualize the entities, attributes, and relationships within a database in a simple diagram.