Introduction to

Data Modeling

Introduction to
INTRODUCTION
Data
Modeling

TO
DATA MODELING

About the Author

Oracle DBA for 18+ years, versions 4 through 10g

Worked for Oracle Education & Consulting
Holds several Oracle Masters (DBA & CASE)
BS, MS, PhD in Computer Science and also an MBA
LOMA insurance industry designations: FLMI and ACS
Books
The TOAD Handbook (Feb 2003)
Oracle DBA Guide to Data Warehousing and Star Schemas (Mar 2003)

Articles

Oracle Magazine
Oracle Technology Network (OTN)
Oracle Informant
PC Week (now E-Magazine)
Linux Journal
www.Linux.com
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About Quest Software

We provide application management solutions
that enable customers to Design, Develop,
Deploy, Manage and Maintain enterprise
applications without downtime

What is Application Management?

A holistic approach of managing the entire
application not individual components

How Do We Do It?
We surround the application infrastructure:
Application Monitoring

Database Management

High Availability

Microsoft Infrastructure Management

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Purpose and Overview

Purpose

Introduce very basic data modeling concepts

Explain how data models relate to the business
Explain how data models relate to databases
Show some data modeling tools and their use

Overview

Why do we model data

What is data modeling
What are entities and attributes
What are unique identifiers
What are relationships
Special constructs: Inheritance & Dependencies
How to translate from logical to physical
How to generate a basic physical database
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Why do we Model?
Would you build an office without a blueprint?
The Architect will create the first high
level drawings to validate the concept
with the client and then make a more
detailed plan (i.e. the blueprint ) for the
Contractor

The Contractor will take this

blueprint and optimise it based
on technical constraints. The Contractor
will then create the actual office.
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World of Modeling
End-user
IT Partner/Liaison Business Process Modeling
(BPM)
Business Analyst

Improve process efficiency

Define/document Bus. Processes
- create correct and complete
application requirements

System Architect
System Analyst
App Developer

Support for all UML diagrams

- Analyze requirements
- Design application
Reverse/forward engineer code

Bus. Analyst
Data Architect
Data Analyst
DBA
DB Developer
DB Architect

Object-Oriented Modeling

(OOM - UML)

Conceptual Data Modeling

(CDM E/R)

Physical Data Modeling

(PDM)

QDesigner synchronizes models

from all levels in a single tool

Identify all data & relationships

- E/R (Entity/Relship) diagrams
- DB independent view
Business Rules?

DB-specific model
Reverse engineer existing DB
Create/Update DB from model
Data Warehouse Modeling

What is Data Modeling?

Conceptual (sometimes called Logical)
Gather data requirements for business functions being
analyzed
Think WHAT??? What data necessary to do the
business function
Its all about the business, do not impose Information
System terms or techniques
No such business things as tables, keys, indexes
and the like
Probably best done by business analysts in sync
with BPM
In some shops, data modelers can bridge the
business/IT gap
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What is Data Modeling?

Physical
Translate logical model into an implementation plan
for a database
Think HOW??? How to construct database
objects to realize this
Its all about the target database or other technology
being adopted
Now its time to think about tables, keys, indexes
and the like
Probably best done by data architects, data
modelers, and DBAs

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Where in Development Lifecycle

Analysis
Design

Conceptual

Some shops
just treat this
as one big
Design task

Reengineer
Physical

Develop

Deploy

Monitor
&
Maintain
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Simple ERD Scenario

Well use a very simple ERD scenario to explain
the techniques
Basic business requirements for a super simple
bank:
Customers interact with Employees to
Open Accounts
Make Transactions
There are two kinds of Accounts
Checking
Savings (offers ATM access)

Looks simple, right? Wait till you see the issues

with just this
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What are Entities

According to Chen a thing which can be
distinctly identified
Peter Chen invented ER diagramming technique in 1976

Look again at the two critical aspects of an

entity
A business pertinent or relative noun
Person, place, thing, or concept that has characteristics of
interest to the enterprise
To find entities, simply look for nouns in your business
analysis

NOTE An entity is not synonymous with a

table
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Entity Meta-Data

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Notation for Entities

General Entity Conventions:
Represented by a box
Name inside top of box
Name is
Unique across model
Business meaningful
In its singular form
In all upper case
Displays no meta-data!!! (cannot see comment & number)

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What are Attributes

Property or characteristic of an entity
Elementary piece of information about an entity
An entity pertinent or relative adjective (i.e. modifies
noun by the use of describing, identifying, or quantifying
words)
To find attributes, simply look for descriptive nouns that wont be
used as entities and/or adjectives in your business analysis
Each entity will generally have several to many attributes and
each attribute may have a little to a lot of meta-data
Take your time

NOTE An attribute is not synonymous with a column

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What are Unique IDs

When defining entities and their attributes, the
following question should be asked
What makes one instance or occurrence of an entity
different from another?
In other words, how can business people differentiate entity
data?

For example in our bank scenario, we are told that

Customers can be differentiated because no two
Customers have the same:
Customer ID
Federal Tax ID
Concatenation of First Name + Last Name + Zip Code

NOTE This has nothing to do with database

keys/indexes
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Attribute Meta-Data

Comment
Business Data Type
Optional or Mandatory
Part of Unique Identifier(s)
Checks

Minimum
Maximum
Default
Units
Format
Upper/Lowercase
Cannot Modify
List of Legal Values
Business Rules

Failure to discover & document

attribute meta-data is where
many data models fail
Failure to capture this meta-data
results in ineffective databases:
thats where bad data is allowed
Next few slides show Quests
QDesigner other modeling
tools will have similar screens

NOTE - This represents the bulk of the work when data modeling
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Meta-Data - Basic

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Meta-Data UIDs

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Meta-Data - Checks

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Meta-Data Rules 1

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Meta-Data Rules 2

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Notation for Attributes

General Attribute Conventions:
Name inside bottom of entity box
Name is
Unique across entity
Business meaningful
In its singular form
In Init-Cap case
Spaces OK (no or _)
Primary unique id is underlined
Primary unique id marked by <pi>
Alternate unique ids marked by <ai#>
Data type shown with length
Mandatory indicated by <M>
Displays limited meta-data!!!
(cannot see comment or any of checks)
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26

Super and Sub Types

In the business world, we often find that things (i.e.
entities) do not fall into simple, clear cut classifications
We sometimes find that things are very similar - with just a few
differences

In data modeling, this can be referred to as:

Entity Inheritance
Super and Sub Types
Generalization Hierarchies

The key question to ask is whether these different

classifications are:
Exclusive must be one way or the other
Inclusive can actually be all ways at once

http://www.quest.com/whitepapers/Reality_Requires-QDesigner.pdf
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Notation for Super/Sub

X means Exclusive

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Super/Sub
Meta-Data

This Super/Sub meta-data only

important for transforming
conceptual to physical model
(next data modeling e-seminar)

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Now the Relationships

Its called ER diagramming
We did the E for Entities first
But its really all about the R for Relationships that really matters

Experience has shown that while many people can readily

define entities and their unique identifiers, not as many are
as successful modeling the business relationships between
those entities
Definition:
A business pertinent or relative connection between two entities
A reason of relevance to the enterprise why entities may be
associated

NOTE A relationship is not synonymous with a foreign key

http://www.quest.com/whitepapers/Its_Really_all_about-QDesigner.pdf
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Ask Lots of Questions

The key to quality relationship analysis is to ask a zillion
business questions, model the answers, and repeat the
process until done
Back to our banking example:
How are Customers related to Accounts
Can a Customer have one or more than one Account (yes)
Can more than one Customer have the same Account (yes - joint)

How are Employees related to Accounts

Can more than one Employee open an Account (lets say no)
Can an Employee open more than one Account (obvious - yes)

How are Transactions related to Accounts

Woops we somehow missed an entity earlier (that will happen)
Can a Transaction apply to more than one Account (obvious - no)
Can an Account have many Transactions over time (obvious - yes)
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Relationship Meta-Data

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Read the Relationships

To verify that youve got it right, read each relationship to
the business analysts or end users to be sure its right.
And you need to read it for both directions. Yes, thats lots
of work
Sentence Format:
EACH entity1 MAY2
MUST2

role_name3

1 OR MORE4
1 AND ONLY 14

3
1

entity5

4
2

Example:
Each employee may open one or more account
Each account must be opened by one and only one employee
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Dependent Relationships
In a dependent association,
one entity is partially
identified by another. Each
entity must have an
identifier. In some cases,
however, the attributes of an
entity are not sufficient to
identify an occurrence of the
entity. For these entities,
their identifiers incorporate
the identifier of another
entity with which they have
a dependent association.
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Relationships Results

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Conceptual -> Physical

Check List:
Verify everything with the business analysts and end users
Verify everything with the business analysts and end users
Verify everything with the business analysts and end users

Use your softwares model checking utilities and/or

reports

Every entity must have unique identifier (as per Chen)

Resolve many-to-many relationships (cannot be built)
Double check isolated entities (i.e. no relationships)
Look for very common modeling patterns (next slide)

Use your softwares generate physical model utility

NOTE Generated physical model will require DBA
review
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Final Conceptual Model

Employees can be
Customers right?
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Initial Physical Model

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Physical Model Work

Check List:
Verify nothing got lost in translation from Conceptual to
Physical
Add table(s) required for implementation, but not modeled
Use your softwares model checking utilities and/or reports
Every table should have primary key
Add foreign key relationship meta-data (next slide)
Add indexes to support data access needs (lots of work)
Use your softwares generate SQL or DDL script utility
Review the script (i.e. never just run SQL without looking)
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Foreign Key Meta-Data

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Final Physical Model

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Physical -> Database

Carefully pick the DBMS

generation options
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Example
DDL Script

Remember the
Conceptual models
meta-data?

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Parting Thoughts
Data Modeling or CASE tools do not automatically = good
design
Must do complete business analysis
Must do adequate Conceptual -> Physical transformation
Must add required physical meta-data (tuning & insight)

Some of worst databases built result from failure to do the

above
There are many other modeling issues this was just a start

Breaking models into sub-models

Conceptual-Physical Model compare and sync
Physical Model-Database compare and sync
Repository based collaborative modeling
Normalization and Denormalization
Data Warehousing (Star Schema design)
etc, etc, etc
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More Information
Free 45-Day Trial of QDesigner
www.quest.com/QDesigner
Compete enterprise modeling solution
Business Process Modeling (BPM)
Object-Oriented (UML) Modeling (OOM)
Conceptual Data Modeling (CDM)
Physical Data Modeling (PDM)

Save $$$: Upgrade your TOAD/SQL Nav license to the

Suite
Suites include PDM!!!

Modeling White Papers

http://www.quest.com/whitepapers/qdesigner/index.asp
Data Modeling: Common Mistakes and Their Impact
Data Modeling: It's Really All About the Relationships
Data Modeling: Reality Requires Super and Sub Types
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QUESTIONS & ANSWERS