Comments on: Introduction to Data Modeling http://www.gabrielharper.com/2004/04/introduction-to-data-modeling/ Business, Web Sites and Life Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:27:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: JOHN OWENS http://www.gabrielharper.com/2004/04/introduction-to-data-modeling/#comment-28412 JOHN OWENS Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:43:58 +0000 http://www.gabrielharper.com/blog/2008/04/introduction-to-data-modeling/#comment-28412 A nicely written article full of very helpful database design guidelines. I have found that you get much more benefit by doing data modeling at the business level, prior to the database design. In such a data model the boxes on the diagram would represent data entities as opposed to tables and the lines would represent relationships, as opposed to foreign keys. This model will be the data model for the business and not just for a single application. In this model you can show complex structures such as subtypes and exclusive relationships. This model would also be fully normalized. How these structures are implemented in any application is a design decision. One application could implement them in one way and another application in another. These design decisions would not be arbitrary but would depend on the scope and size of each application, taking into account performance and denormalization requirements. I have written an eBook on business data modeling which will help all developers to arrive at far more elegant, yet powerful database design. It is part of the Integrated Modeling Method. A nicely written article full of very helpful database design guidelines.

I have found that you get much more benefit by doing data modeling at the business level, prior to the database design.

In such a data model the boxes on the diagram would represent data entities as opposed to tables and the lines would represent relationships, as opposed to foreign keys. This model will be the data model for the business and not just for a single application.

In this model you can show complex structures such as subtypes and exclusive relationships. This model would also be fully normalized.

How these structures are implemented in any application is a design decision. One application could implement them in one way and another application in another. These design decisions would not be arbitrary but would depend on the scope and size of each application, taking into account performance and denormalization requirements.

I have written an eBook on business data modeling which will help all developers to arrive at far more elegant, yet powerful database design. It is part of the Integrated Modeling Method.

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