1 Running Head: DATA MODELING

Data Modeling Jesse A. Lineberger Columbia Southern University

2 Data Modeling

Data modeling is a process of software engineering, which creates a data model by utilizing data model descriptions using data modeling approaches. Data modeling is the method of defining and analyzing data requirements, which are essential to support the business processes of a firm (Brown, 2009). The implementation of conceptual model is known as logical data model. A data model is a conceptual representation of the data structures needed by a database. Data structures include the data objects, associations between data objects, and the rules which govern them. Data Model is independent hardware or software constraints. Data modeling acts as a link between the concepts of real world events and the concepts in a database. There can be two major methodologies used in creating a data model, the Entity-Relationship (ER) approach and object model.

There are three primary types of data models; conceptual, logical and physical. A conceptual data model is one that captures data and relationship concepts in a technology-independent manner. For example, if a person rents a car while traveling, he is an individual customer. On the other hand, if a movie Production Company rents vehicles for production purposes, it is a corporate customer (OPPEL, 2010).

A logical data model is a data model customized to a particular type of data base management system, such as relational, object-relational, object-oriented, hierarchical, or network. For example, the date of birth describes an individual customer, while the company name describes a Corporate Customer. A physical data model is a data model

3 Data Modeling that is customized to the features and constraints of a particular database management system (DBMS), such as SQL (OPPEL, 2010).

The primary objective of Data Modeling is to support the development of information systems by providing the explanation and information of data (Data Modeling).

Data Modeling is the most labor intensive and time consuming part of the development process. The data model is also intensely detailed to be used by the data base developers to use as a blueprint for developing the physical database. Information contained in the data model will be used to define the relational tables, stored procedures and triggers. Therefore, a data model is a plan for building a database. To be effective, it must be simple to communicate to the end user. The Entity-Relation model (ER) is most commonly used to build data models for relational databases (Blaha, 2010).

References

Brown, C., DeHayes, D., Hoffer, J., Martin, E.W., Perkins, W. (2009). Management Information Technology. Pearson, Prentice Hall 6ed

Blaha, M. (2010). Patterns of Data Modeling. Raton, USA: CRC Press.

4 Data Modeling. Retrieved online on July 28, 2011, from http://www.liberty.edu/media/1414/%5B6330%5DERDDataModeling.pdf OPPEL. (2010). Data Modeling: Abg. Tata McGraw-Hill Education.