Data Models A data model is a collection of concepts for describing data, data relationships, data semantics and consistency

constraints. A schema is a description of a particular collection of data, using a given data model. Primary categories for various data models are: o Object-based logical models Provide very high level design of the database Provide flexible structuring capabilities. The most popular ones are as follows: The Entity-Relationship model The object oriented model The semantic model The functional model o Record-based logical models Provide more implementation based design Specify overall logical structure of the database and provide high level description of the implementation The most popular ones are as follows: Relational Model Network Model Hierarchical Model o Physical models Describe data at the lowest level Captures aspects of database-system implementation Widely known are unifying model and frame-memory model Entity Relationship model (E-R Model): Identifies basic elements, or objects, or entities which are core to the data base Consider for example the Library database. Most basic entities of a library can be identified as books and users. There are other basic entities like suppliers, magazines, journals etc.. We describe the database generally be diagrams called E-R diagrams when using ER Model. The sample E-R diagram for the above mentioned simple library database having only two entities Books and Users can be formed as follows. All of the entities of type book will be represented by an entity set.(represented by rectangle)

Similarly we represent all users by an entity set We identify what are various attributes that describes the entities of an entity set. A book is
described in library by its Accession Number, Call Number, Title, Author, Publisher, Year of publication etc. They are attached to entities as Ellipses as shown below: Similarly we associate attributes which defines a user in library to the respective entity in E-R diagram as shown below