What Is Data Modeling - Introduction For Business Analysts
What Is Data Modeling - Introduction For Business Analysts
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10/20/24, 1:52 PM What is Data Modeling | Introduction for Business Analysts
Let’s first consider the phrase “what is data modeling” by drilling down to the basic elements, data and modeling.
Data is all around us, anything that you might want to capture as information, retrieve for later use or refer to in a
conversation is a type of data. Every system on this earth is dependent on data of some description. It can be
recording personal details of an employee in a company database or transaction information generated as a result of a
sales transaction. All of this is examples of data.
With data modeling it is all about determining what data we want to capture for a specific purpose and to then
logically organise that data. We also want the logical data sets to relate to each other in some way because together
the data work together to produce some meaningful information.
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10/20/24, 1:52 PM What is Data Modeling | Introduction for Business Analysts
To further describe ‘what is data modeling’, consider these entities (sometimes referred to as concepts) for the
example provided:
Job Role (the “thing” in this case is the Job Role in the organisational structure)
Salary Package (the “thing” in this case is the employee contract stipulating the Salary Package)
Payment Details (the “thing” in this case is the employee’s bank account)
Employee = Attributes could include: (Name, Address line 1, Address line 2, Date of Birth, City, Country, Phone
Number)
Advanced Concept: An important point to take note of at this point is that you should always only capture information
about an entity which is directly related to that entity. This is because with data modeling we aim to not duplicate any
attributes in a database table which could logically have been captured against its own entity.
Once you have identified the significant relationships between these entities you will be able to define the cardinality
or multiplicity of the relationship. This is where you assess the number of relationships allowed or is required between
the entities. In the example we have: Every employee must perform one and only one Job Role. (Cardinality between
Employee and Job Role is 1:1). However, every Job Role can be performed by 1 to many Employees (so the cardinality
between Job Role and Employee is 1 to many).
Finally, the last step when doing data modeling is to define the meta data. Meta data is data that describes data.
Examples of meta data includes usage information about your data. For example, if a record in your newly created
database was added, the meta data would describe when the record was added, by which user and perhaps a flag to
confirm it is free from errors.
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10/20/24, 1:52 PM What is Data Modeling | Introduction for Business Analysts
So now that you have read about the basics of what is data modeling, you should be able as a Business Analyst
(http://business-analysis-excellence.com/business-analysis-experience/) to interpret and understand the fundamental
concepts when faced with a data model.
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