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3) The Importance of Data Models

Data models organize data for various users through representations of data structures and relationships. They describe entities, attributes, and relationships between entities using basic building blocks like entities, attributes, and constraints. Effective data models are developed by discovering business rules from sources like managers, documentation, and user interviews to design logical relational tables and entity relationship diagrams that model the database components and structure.

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81 views3 pages

3) The Importance of Data Models

Data models organize data for various users through representations of data structures and relationships. They describe entities, attributes, and relationships between entities using basic building blocks like entities, attributes, and constraints. Effective data models are developed by discovering business rules from sources like managers, documentation, and user interviews to design logical relational tables and entity relationship diagrams that model the database components and structure.

Uploaded by

nastaranesmaeilzadeh2
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3)The Importance of Data Models

• Data models

– Relatively simple representations, usually graphical, of complex real-world data


structures

– Facilitate interaction among the designer, the applications programmer, and the end
user

• End-users have different views and needs for data

• Data model organizes data for various users

Data Model Basic Building Blocks

• Entity - anything about which data are to be collected and stored

• Attribute - a characteristic of an entity

• Relationship - describes an association among entities

– One-to-many (1:M) relationship

– Many-to-many (M:N or M:M) relationship

– One-to-one (1:1) relationship

• Constraint - a restriction placed on the data

Business Rules

• Brief, precise, and unambiguous descriptions of a policies, procedures, or principles within a


specific organization

• Apply to any organization that stores and uses data to generate information

• Description of operations that help to create and enforce actions within that organization’s
environment

• Must be rendered in writing

• Must be kept up to date

• Sometimes are external to the organization

• Must be easy to understand and widely disseminated

• Describe characteristics of the data as viewed by the company


Discovering Business Rules

Sources of Business Rules:

• Company managers

• Policy makers

• Department managers

• Written documentation

– Procedures

– Standards

– Operations manuals

• Direct interviews with end users

• Generally, nouns translate into entities

• Verbs translate into relationships among entities

• Relationships are bi-directional

The Evolution of Data Models (continued)

• Hierarchical

• Network

• Relational

• Entity relationship

The Relational Model

• Developed by Codd (IBM) in 1970

• Considered ingenious but impractical in 1970

• Conceptually simple

• Computers lacked power to implement the relational model

• Today, microcomputers can run sophisticated relational database software

• Table (relations)

• Matrix consisting of a series of row/column intersections

• Related to each other through sharing a common entity characteristic


• Relational diagram

• Representation of relational database’s entities, attributes within those entities, and


relationships between those entities

• Relational Table

• Stores a collection of related entities

• Resembles a file

• Relational table is purely logical structure

• How data are physically stored in the database is of no concern to the user or the
designer

• This property became the source of a real database revolution

The Entity Relationship Model

• Widely accepted and adapted graphical tool for data modeling

• Introduced by Chen in 1976

• Graphical representation of entities and their relationships in a database structure

• Entity relationship diagram (ERD)

• Uses graphic representations to model database components

• Entity is mapped to a relational table

• Entity instance (or occurrence) is row in table

• Entity set is collection of like entities

• Connectivity labels types of relationships

• Diamond connected to related entities through a relationship line

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