Abdoulaye M Yansane, Abdoulaye Mouke Yansane, Mouke Yansane

Data Modeling 101 www.agiledata.org: Techniques for Successful Evolutionary/Agile Database Development
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The goals of this article are to overview fundamental data modeling skills that all developers should have, skills that can be applied on both traditional projects that take a serial approach to agile projects that take an evolutionary approach. My personal philosophy is that every IT professional should have a basic understanding of data modeling. They dont need to be experts at data modeling, but they should be prepared to be involved in the creation of such a model, be able to read an existing data model, understand when and when not to create a data model, and appreciate fundamental data design techniques. This article is a brief introduction to these skills. The primary audience for this article is application developers who need to gain an understanding of some of the critical activities performed by an Agile DBA. This understanding should lead to an appreciation of what Agile DBAs do and why they do them, and it should help to bridge the communication gap between these two roles. Table of Contents 1. What is data modeling?
o How are data models used in practice? o What about conceptual models? o Common data modeling notations

2. How to model data

o Identify entity types o Identify attributes o Apply naming conventions o Identify relationships o Apply data model patterns o Assign keys o Normalize to reduce data redundancy o Denormalize to improve performance

3. Evolutionary/agile data modeling 4. How to become better at modeling data

1. What is Data Modeling? Data modeling is the act of exploring data-oriented structures. Like other modeling artifacts data models can be used for a variety of purposes, from high-level conceptual models to physical data models. From the point of view of an

object-oriented developer data modeling is conceptually similar to class modeling. With data modeling you identify entity types whereas with class modeling you identify classes. Data attributes are assigned to entity types just as you would assign attributes and operations to classes. There are associations between entities, similar to the associations between classes relationships, inheritance, composition, and aggregation are all applicable concepts in data modeling. Traditional data modeling is different from class modeling because it focuses solely on data class models allow you to explore both the behavior and data aspects of your domain, with a data model you can only explore data issues. Because of this focus data modelers have a tendency to be much better at getting the data right than object modelers. However, some people will model database methods (stored procedures, stored functions, and triggers) when they are physical data modeling. It depends on the situation of course, but I personally think that this is a good idea and promote the concept in my UML data modeling profile (more on this later). Although the focus of this article is data modeling, there are often alternatives to data-oriented artifacts (never forget Agile Modelings Multiple Models principle). For example, when it comes to conceptual modeling ORM diagrams arent your only option In addition to LDMs it is quite common for people to create UML class diagrams and even Class Responsibility Collaborator (CRC) cards instead. In fact, my experience is that CRC cards are superior to ORM diagrams because it is very easy to get project stakeholders actively involved in the creation of the model. Instead of a traditional, analyst-led drawing session you can instead facilitate stakeholders through the creation of CRC cards.

1.1 How are Data Models Used in Practice? Although methodology issues are covered later, we need to discuss how data models can be used in practice to better understand them. You are likely to see three basic styles of data model: Conceptual data models. These models, sometimes called domain models, are typically used to explore domain concepts with project stakeholders. On Agile teams high-level conceptual models are often created as part of your initial requirements envisioning efforts as they are used to explore the high-level static business structures and concepts. On traditional teams conceptual data models are often created as the precursor to LDMs or as alternatives to LDMs. Logical data models (LDMs). LDMs are used to explore the domain concepts, and their relationships, of your problem domain. This could be done for the scope of a single project or for your entire enterprise. LDMs depict the logical entity types, typically referred to simply as entity types, the data attributes describing those entities, and the relationships between the entities. LDMs are rarely used on Agile projects although often are on traditional projects (where they rarely seem to add much value in practice). Physical data models (PDMs). PDMs are used to design the internal schema of a database, depicting the data tables, the data columns of those tables, and the relationships between the tables. PDMs often prove to be useful on both Agile and traditional projects and as a result the focus of this article is on physical modeling.

Although LDMs and PDMs sound very similar, and they in fact are, the level of detail that they model can be significantly different. This is because the goals for each diagram is different you can use an LDM to explore

domain concepts with your stakeholders and the PDM to define your database design. Figure 1 presents a simple LDM and Figure 2 a simple PDM, both modeling the concept of customers and addresses as well as the relationship between them. Both diagrams apply the Barker notation, summarized below. Notice how the PDM shows greater detail, including an associative table required to implement the association as well as the keys needed to maintain the relationships. More on these concepts later. PDMs should also reflect your organizations database naming standards, in this case an abbreviation of the entity name is appended to each column name and an abbreviation for Number was consistently introduced. A PDM should also indicate the data types for the columns, such as integer and char(5). Although Figure 2 does not show them, lookup tables (also called reference tables or description tables) for how the address is used as well as for states and countries are implied by the attributes ADDR_USAGE_CODE, STATE_CODE, and COUNTRY_CODE.

Figure 1. A simple logical data model.

Figure 2. A simple physical data model.

An important observation about Figures 1 and 2 is that Im not slavishly following Barkers approach to naming relationships. For example, between Customer and Address there really should be two names Each CUSTOMER may be located in one or more ADDRESSES and Each ADDRESS may be the site of one or more CUSTOMERS. Although these names explicitly define the relationship I personally think that theyre visual noise that clutter the diagram. I prefer simple names such as has and then trust my readers to interpret the name in each direction. Ill only add more information where its needed, in this case I think that it isnt. However, a significant advantage of describing the names the way that Barker suggests is that its a good test to see if you actually understand the relationship if you cant name it then you likely dont understand it.

Data models can be used effectively at both the enterprise level and on projects. Enterprise architects will often create one or more high-level LDMs that depict the data structures that support your enterprise, models typically referred to as enterprise data models or enterprise information models. An enterprise data model is one of several views that your organizations enterprise architects may choose to maintain and support other views may explore your network/hardware infrastructure, your organization structure, your software infrastructure, and your business processes (to name a few). Enterprise data models provide information that a project team can use both as a set of constraints as well as important insights into the structure of their system. Project teams will typically create LDMs as a primary analysis artifact when their implementation environment is predominantly procedural in nature, for example they are using structured COBOL as an implementation language. LDMs are also a good choice when a project is data-oriented in nature, perhaps a data warehouse or reporting system is being developed (having said that, experience seems to show that usage-centered approaches appear to work even better). However LDMs are often a poor choice when a project team is using object-oriented or component-based technologies because the developers would rather work with UML diagrams or when the project is not data-oriented in nature. As Agile Modeling advises, apply the right artifact(s) for the job. Or, as your grandfather likely advised you, use the right tool for the job. It's important to note that traditional approaches to Master Data Management (MDM) will often motivate the creation and maintenance of detailed LDMs, an effort that is rarely justifiable in practice when you consider the total cost of ownership (TCO) when calculating the return on investment (ROI) of those sorts of efforts. When a relational database is used for data storage project teams are best advised to create a PDMs to model its internal schema. My experience is that a PDM is often one of the critical design artifacts for business application development projects.

2.2. What About Conceptual Models? Halpin (2001) points out that many data professionals prefer to create an Object-Role Model (ORM), an example is depicted in Figure 3, instead of an LDM for a conceptual model. The advantage is that the notation is very simple, something your project stakeholders can quickly grasp, although the disadvantage is that the models become large very quickly. ORMs enable you to first explore actual data examples instead of simply jumping to a potentially incorrect abstraction for example Figure 3 examines the relationship between customers and addresses in detail. For more information about ORM, visit www.orm.net.

Figure 3. A simple Object-Role Model.

My experience is that people will capture information in the best place that they know. As a result I typically discard ORMs after Im finished with them. I sometimes user ORMs to explore the domain with project stakeholders but later replace them with a more traditional artifact such as an LDM, a class diagram, or even a PDM. As a generalizing specialist, someone with one or more specialties who also strives to gain general skills and knowledge, this is an easy decision for me to make; I know that this information that Ive just discarded will be captured in another artifact a model, the tests, or even the code that I understand. A specialist who only understands a limited number of artifacts and therefore hands-off their work to other specialists doesnt have this as an option. Not only are they tempted to keep the artifacts that they create but also to invest even more time to enhance the artifacts. Generalizing specialists are more likely than specialists to travel light.

2.3. Common Data Modeling Notations Figure 4 presents a summary of the syntax of four common data modeling notations: Information Engineering (IE), Barker, IDEF1X, and the Unified Modeling Language (UML). This diagram isnt meant to be comprehensive, instead its goal is to provide a basic overview. Furthermore, for the sake of brevity I wasnt able to depict the highlydetailed approach to relationship naming that Barker suggests. Although I provide a brief description of each notation in Table 1 I highly suggest David Hays paper A Comparison of Data Modeling Techniques as he goes into greater detail than I do.

Figure 4. Comparing the syntax of common data modeling notations.

Table 1. Discussing common data modeling notations. Notation IE Comments The IE notation (Finkelstein 1989) is simple and easy to read, and is well suited for high-level logical and enterprise data modeling. The only drawback of this notation, arguably an advantage, is that it does not support the identification of attributes of an entity. The assumption is that the attributes will be modeled with another diagram or simply described in the supporting documentation. The Barker notation is one of the more popular ones, it is supported by Oracles toolset, and is well suited for all types of data models. Its approach to subtyping can become clunky with hierarchies that go several levels deep. This notation is overly complex. It was originally intended for physical modeling but has been misapplied for logical modeling as well. Although popular within some U.S. government agencies, particularly the Department of Defense (DoD), this notation has been all but abandoned by everyone else. Avoid it if you can. This is not an official data modeling notation (yet). Although several suggestions for a data modeling profile for the UML exist, none are complete and more importantly are not official UML yet. However, the Object Management Group (OMG) in December 2005 announced an RFP for dataoriented models.

Barker

IDEF1X

UML

3. How to Model Data It is critical for an application developer to have a grasp of the fundamentals of data modeling so they can not only read data models but also work effectively with Agile DBAs who are responsible for the data-oriented aspects of your project. Your goal reading this section is not to learn how to become a data modeler, instead it is simply to gain an appreciation of what is involved. The following tasks are performed in an iterative manner:
Identify entity types Identify attributes Apply naming conventions Identify relationships Apply data model patterns Assign keys Normalize to reduce data redundancy

Denormalize to improve performance Very good practical books about data modeling include Joe Celkos Data & Databases and Data Modeling for Information Professionals as they both focus on practical issues with data modeling. The Data Modeling Handbook and Data Model Patterns

are both excellent resources once youve mastered the fundamentals. An Introduction to Database Systems is a good academic treatise for anyone wishing to become a data specialist.

3.1 Identify Entity Types An entity type, also simply called entity (not exactly accurate terminology, but very common in practice), is similar conceptually to object-orientations concept of a class an entity type represents a collection of similar objects. An entity type could represent a collection of people, places, things, events, or concepts. Examples of entities in an order entry system would include Customer, Address, Order, Item, and Tax. If you were class modeling you would expect to discover classes with the exact same names. However, the difference between a class and an entity type is that classes have both data and behavior whereas entity types just have data. Ideally an entity should be normal, the data modeling worlds version of cohesive. A normal entity depicts one concept, just like a cohesive class models one concept. For example, customer and order are clearly two different concepts; therefore it makes sense to model them as separate entities.

3.2 Identify Attributes Each entity type will have one or more data attributes. For example, in Figure 1 you saw that the Customer entity has attributes such as First Name and Surname and in Figure 2 that the TCUSTOMER table had corresponding data columns CUST_FIRST_NAME and CUST_SURNAME (a column is the implementation of a data attribute within a relational database). Attributes should also be cohesive from the point of view of your domain, something that is often a judgment call. in Figure 1 we decided that we wanted to model the fact that people had both first and last names instead of just a name (e.g. Scott and Ambler vs. Scott Ambler) whereas we did not distinguish between the sections of an American zip code (e.g. 90210-1234-5678). Getting the level of detail right can have a significant impact on your development and maintenance efforts. Refactoring a single data column into several columns can be difficult, database refactoring is described in detail in Database Refactoring, although over-specifying an attribute (e.g. having three attributes for zip code when you only needed one) can result in overbuilding your system and hence you incur greater development and maintenance costs than you actually needed.

3.3 Apply Data Naming Conventions Your organization should have standards and guidelines applicable to data modeling, something you should be able to obtain from your enterprise administrators (if they dont exist you should lobby to have some put in place). These

guidelines should include naming conventions for both logical and physical modeling, the logical naming conventions should be focused on human readability whereas the physical naming conventions will reflect technical considerations. You can clearly see that different naming conventions were applied in Figures 1 and 2. As you saw in Introduction to Agile Modeling, AM includes the Apply Modeling Standards practice. The basic idea is that developers should agree to and follow a common set of modeling standards on a software project. Just like there is value in following common coding conventions, clean code that follows your chosen coding guidelines is easier to understand and evolve than code that doesn't, there is similar value in following common modeling conventions.

3.4 Identify Relationships In the real world entities have relationships with other entities. For example, customers PLACE orders, customers LIVE AT addresses, and line items ARE PART OF orders. Place, live at, and are part of are all terms that define relationships between entities. The relationships between entities are conceptually identical to the relationships (associations) between objects. depicts a partial LDM for an online ordering system. The first thing to notice is the various styles applied to relationship names and roles different relationships require different approaches. For example the relationship between Customer and Order has two names, places and is placed by, whereas the relationship between Customer and Address has one. In this example having a second name on the relationship, the idea being that you want to specify how to read the relationship in each direction, is redundant youre better off to find a clear wording for a single relationship name, decreasing the clutter on your diagram. Similarly you will often find that by specifying the roles that an entity plays in a relationship will often negate the need to give the relationship a name (although some CASE tools may inadvertently force you to do this). For example the role of billing address and the label billed to are clearly redundant, you really only need one. For example the role part of that Line Item has in its relationship with Order is sufficiently obvious without a relationship name.
Figure 5

Figure 5. A logical data model (Information Engineering notation).

You also need to identify the cardinality and optionality of a relationship (the UML combines the concepts of optionality and cardinality into the single concept of multiplicity). Cardinality represents the concept of how many whereas optionality represents the concept of whether you must have something. For example, it is not enough to know that customers place orders. How many orders can a customer place? None, one, or several? Furthermore, relationships are two-way streets: not only do customers place orders, but orders are placed by customers. This leads to questions like: how many customers can be enrolled in any given order and is it possible to have an order with no customer involved? Figure 5 shows that customers place one or more orders and that any given order is placed by one customer and one customer only. It also shows that a customer lives at one or more addresses and that any given address has zero or more customers living at it. Although the UML distinguishes between different types of relationships associations, inheritance, aggregation, composition, and dependency data modelers often arent as concerned with this issue as much as object modelers are. Subtyping, one application of inheritance, is often found in data models, an example of which is the is a relationship between Item and its two sub entities Service and Product. Aggregation and composition are much less common and typically must be implied from the data model, as you see with the part of role that Line Item takes with Order. UML dependencies are typically a software construct and therefore wouldnt appear on a data model, unless of course it was a very highly detailed physical model that showed how views, triggers, or stored procedures depended on other aspects of the database schema.

3.5 Apply Data Model Patterns Some data modelers will apply common data model patterns, David Hays book Data Model Patterns is the best reference on the subject, just as object-oriented developers will apply analysis patterns (Fowler 1997; Ambler 1997) and design patterns (Gamma et al. 1995). Data model patterns are conceptually closest to analysis patterns because they describe solutions to common domain issues. Hays book is a very good reference for anyone involved in analysis-level modeling, even when youre taking an object approach instead of a data approach because his patterns model business structures from a wide variety of business domains.

3.6 Assign Keys There are two fundamental strategies for assigning keys to tables. First, you could assign a natural key which is one or more existing data attributes that are unique to the business concept. The Customer table of Figure 6 there was two candidate keys, in this case CustomerNumber and SocialSecurityNumber. Second, you could introduce a new column, called a surrogate key, which is a key that has no business meaning. An example of which is the AddressID column of the Address table in Figure 6. Addresses dont have an easy natural key because you would need to use all of the columns of the Address table to form a key for itself (you might be able to get away with just the combination of Street and ZipCode depending on your problem domain), therefore introducing a surrogate key is a much better option in this case.

Figure 6. Customer and Address revisited (UML notation).

Let's consider Figure 6 in more detail. Figure 6 presents an alternative design to that presented in Figure 2, a different naming convention was adopted and the model itself is more extensive. In Figure 6 the Customer table has the CustomerNumber column as its primary key and SocialSecurityNumber as an alternate key. This indicates that the preferred way to access customer information is through the value of a persons customer number although your software can get at the same information if it has the persons social security number. The CustomerHasAddress table has a composite primary key, the combination of CustomerNumber and AddressID. A foreign key is one or more attributes in an entity type that represents a key, either primary or secondary, in another entity type. Foreign keys are used to maintain relationships between rows. For example, the relationships between rows in the CustomerHasAddress table and the Customer table is maintained by the CustomerNumber column within the CustomerHasAddress table. The interesting thing about the CustomerNumber column is the fact that it is part of the primary key for CustomerHasAddress as well as the foreign key to the Customer table. Similarly, the AddressID column is part of the primary key of CustomerHasAddress as well as a foreign key to the Address table to maintain the relationship with rows of Address. Although the "natural vs. surrogate" debate is one of the great religious issues within the data community, the fact is that neither strategy is perfect and you'll discover that in practice (as we see in Figure 6) sometimes it makes sense to use natural keys and sometimes it makes sense to use surrogate keys. In Choosing a Primary Key: Natural or Surrogate? I describe the relevant issues in detail.

3.7 Normalize to Reduce Data Redundancy

is a process in which data attributes within a data model are organized to increase the cohesion of entity types. In other words, the goal of data normalization is to reduce and even eliminate data redundancy, an important consideration for application developers because it is incredibly difficult to stores objects in a relational database that maintains the same information in several places. Table 2 summarizes the three most common normalization rules describing how to put entity types into a series of increasing levels of normalization. Higher levels of data normalization (Date 2000) are beyond the scope of this book. With respect to terminology, a data schema is considered to be at the level of normalization of its least normalized entity type. For example, if all of your entity types are at second normal form (2NF) or higher then we say that your data schema is at 2NF.
Data normalization

Table 2. Data Normalization Rules. Level First normal form (1NF) Second normal form (2NF) Third normal form (3NF) Rule An entity type is in 1NF when it contains no repeating groups of data. An entity type is in 2NF when it is in 1NF and when all of its non-key attributes are fully dependent on its primary key. An entity type is in 3NF when it is in 2NF and when all of its attributes are directly dependent on the primary key.

Figure 7 depicts a database schema in ONF whereas Figure 8 depicts a normalized schema in 3NF. Read the Introduction to Data Normalization essay for details. Why data normalization? The advantage of having a highly normalized data schema is that information is stored in one place and one place only, reducing the possibility of inconsistent data. Furthermore, highly-normalized data schemas in general are closer conceptually to object-oriented schemas because the object-oriented goals of promoting high cohesion and loose coupling between classes results in similar solutions (at least from a data point of view). This generally makes it easier to map your objects to your data schema. Unfortunately, normalization usually comes at a performance cost. With the data schema of Figure 7 all the data for a single order is stored in one row (assuming orders of up to nine order items), making it very easy to access. With the data schema of Figure 7 you could quickly determine the total amount of an order by reading the single row from the Order0NF table. To do so with the data schema of Figure 8 you would need to read data from a row in the Order table, data from all the rows from the OrderItem table for that order and data from the corresponding rows in the Item table for each order item. For this query, the data schema of Figure 7 very likely provides better performance.

Figure 7. An Initial Data Schema for Order (UML Notation).

Figure 8. A normalized schema in 3NF (UML Notation).

In class modeling, there is a similar concept called Class Normalization although that is beyond the scope of this article.

3.8 Denormalize to Improve Performance Normalized data schemas, when put into production, often suffer from performance problems. This makes sense the rules of data normalization focus on reducing data redundancy, not on improving performance of data access. An important part of data modeling is to denormalize portions of your data schema to improve database access times. For example, the data model of Figure 9 looks nothing like the normalized schema of Figure 8. To understand why the differences between the schemas exist you must consider the performance needs of the application. The primary goal of this system is to process new orders from online customers as quickly as possible. To do this customers need to be able to search for items and add them to their order quickly, remove items from their order if need be, then have their final order totaled and recorded quickly. The secondary goal of the system is to the process, ship, and bill the orders afterwards.

Figure 9. A Denormalized Order Data Schema (UML notation).

To denormalize the data schema the following decisions were made: 1. To support quick searching of item information the Item table was left alone. 2. To support the addition and removal of order items to an order the concept of an OrderItem table was kept, albeit split in two to support outstanding orders and fulfilled orders. New order items can easily be inserted into the OutstandingOrderItem table, or removed from it, as needed. 3. To support order processing the Order and OrderItem tables were reworked into pairs to handle outstanding and fulfilled orders respectively. Basic order information is first stored in the OutstandingOrder and OutstandingOrderItem tables and then when the order has been shipped and paid for the data is then removed from those tables and copied into the FulfilledOrder and FulfilledOrderItem tables respectively. Data access time to the two tables for outstanding orders is reduced because only the active orders are being

stored there. On average an order may be outstanding for a couple of days, whereas for financial reporting reasons may be stored in the fulfilled order tables for several years until archived. There is a performance penalty under this scheme because of the need to delete outstanding orders and then resave them as fulfilled orders, clearly something that would need to be processed as a transaction. 4. The contact information for the person(s) the order is being shipped and billed to was also denormalized back into the Order table, reducing the time it takes to write an order to the database because there is now one write instead of two or three. The retrieval and deletion times for that data would also be similarly improved. Note that if your initial, normalized data design meets the performance needs of your application then it is fine as is. Denormalization should be resorted to only when performance testing shows that you have a problem with your objects and subsequent profiling reveals that you need to improve database access time. As my grandfather said, if it aint broke dont fix it.

5. Evolutionary/Agile Data Modeling Evolutionary data modeling is data modeling performed in an iterative and incremental manner. The article Evolutionary Development explores evolutionary software development in greater detail. Agile data modeling is evolutionary data modeling done in a collaborative manner. The article Agile Data Modeling: From Domain Modeling to Physical Modeling works through a case study which shows how to take an agile approach to data modeling. Although you wouldnt think it, data modeling can be one of the most challenging tasks that an Agile DBA can be involved with on an agile software development project. Your approach to data modeling will often be at the center of any controversy between the agile software developers and the traditional data professionals within your organization. Agile software developers will lean towards an evolutionary approach where data modeling is just one of many activities whereas traditional data professionals will often lean towards a big design up front (BDUF) approach where data models are the primary artifacts, if not THE artifacts. This problem results from a combination of the cultural impedance mismatch, a misguided need to enforce the "one truth", and normal political maneuvering within your organization. As a result Agile DBAs often find that navigating the political waters is an important part of their data modeling efforts.

6. How to Become Better At Modeling Data How do you improve your data modeling skills? Practice, practice, practice. Whenever you get a chance you should work closely with Agile DBAs, volunteer to model data with them, and ask them questions as the work progresses. Agile DBAs will be following the AM practice Model With Others so should welcome the assistance as well as the questions one of the best ways to really learn your craft is to have someone as why are you doing it that way. You should be able to learn physical data modeling skills from Agile DBAs, and often logical data modeling skills as well.

Similarly you should take the opportunity to work with the enterprise architects within your organization. As you saw in Agile Enterprise Architecture they should be taking an active role on your project, mentoring your project team in the enterprise architecture (if any), mentoring you in modeling and architectural skills, and aiding in your teams modeling and development efforts. Once again, volunteer to work with them and ask questions when you are doing so. Enterprise architects will be able to teach you conceptual and logical data modeling skills as well as instill an appreciation for enterprise issues. You also need to do some reading. Although this article is a good start it is only a brief introduction. The best approach is to simply ask the Agile DBAs that you work with what they think you should read. My final word of advice is that it is critical for application developers to understand and appreciate the fundamentals of data modeling. This is a valuable skill to have and has been since the 1970s. It also provides a common framework within which you can work with Agile DBAs, and may even prove to be the initial skill that enables you to make a career transition into becoming a full-fledged Agile DBA.

7. References and Suggested Online Readings

Agile/Evolutionary Data Modeling Agile Database Best Practices Agile Master Data Management (MDM) Agile Modeling Best Practices Choosing a Primary Key: Natural or Surrogate? Comparing the Various Approaches to Modeling in Software Development Data & Databases Data Model Patterns Data Modeling for Information Professionals The Data Modeling Handbook Database Modeling Within an XP Methodology (Ronald Bradford) Initial High-Level Architectural Envisioning Initial High-Level Requirements Envisioning Introduction to Data Normalization Logical Data Modeling: What It Is and How To Do It On Relational Theory The "One Truth Above All Else" Anti-Pattern Prioritized Requirements: An Agile Best Practice Survey Results (Agile and Data Management) When is Enough Modeling Enough?

by Alan Chmura and J. Mark Heumann

Data Modeling Techniques, Rules, and Diagram Conventions Section 4 of the On-line Course: Learning the Cadastral Data Content Standard

Technical Sections Sections 4 through 8 are the sections of the Cadastral Data Content Standard educational course which present detailed technical concepts about data models, crosswalks, translations, and maintenance of the Standard. Section 4 describes the entity relationship diagram and the definitions and relationships used in the Cadastral Data Content Standard, clarifying the data modeling conventions used in the Standard's logical model. Please note that data modeling is a precise and detailed discipline, often requiring a good bit of effort to gain a working knowledge. If you are new to data modeling, keep in mind that the information presented here in Section 4 may require some extra time and patience to understand.

Topics in Section 4:
Overview of the Model Logical Models vs Physical Models The Content Standard versus a 'Physical' Standard Links and References to Information on Data Modeling

Overview of the Cadastral Data Content Standard Model The Cadastral Data Content Standard model is an illustration of the objects in the Standard. The model is known as a logical model, and is illustrated in an entity relationship diagram (or E-R diagram). The logical model describes the definitions or semantics of the cadastral information referred to in the Standard. An entity relationship diagram is a shorthand method for showing the associations among various objects in the model, and the relationships between the objects. The entity relationship diagram illustrates the model's objects, such as the entities, attributes, and the associations (see *Note below). A logical data model is not an implementation model. Implementation requires modifying the logical data model to best fit operating software. This process, called denormalization, is the process of combining entities into tables in a database that optimize the database operation. See the diagram conventions discussion for more information about the E-R diagram used in the Cadastral Data Content Standard.

(* Note: The term "association" is used throughout the Cadastral Data Content Standard to refer to descriptions of how data entities are related to each other. Some people may be more accustomed to using the term "relationship", and may wish to substitute that term for "association" while investigating the sections which describe the data model.)

Logical Models vs Physical Models The following is a description of the differences between logical models and physical models. Data modeling professionals often note that there are varying ways of dealing with such details as keys, relationships, and normalization. Accordingly, the description below has been kept as general as possible. Logical models depict the true relationships of attributes as they are grouped into entities, relating attributes to attributes and entities to entities. Logical models are not concerned with implementation, storage mechanisms, and redundancy of data. Logical models are usually normalized. Normalized means that every attribute is independent, that is, not dependent on any other attribute. Physical models are concerned with the implementation of logical models, and are designed to account for data storage, indexes, how to retrieve data, and how keys are concatenated. Physical models strive to optimize logical models according to how data are going to be used, such as for reports, data entry, and analysis. Physical models take into account the software that will be used, as well as whether the database will be relational, hierarchical or network. Entities do not have to be the same between the logical model and the physical model. That is, in order to accomodate efficient use of data, a physical model may have a greater or fewer number of entities than a logical model. The physical model assigns lengths to attribute fields. A physical model is usually de-normalized, that is, attributes may be assigned values and dependencies with other attributes to support using the data. For example, an attribute can be derived for one or more other attributes. The attribute is used daily for reporting purposes so the derived attribute is stored in the data base to avoid daily recalculation.

The Content Standard versus a 'Physical' Standard The Cadastral Data Content Standard is just that, a content standard. The Standard defines the kinds of entities, attributes, range of values, and logical relationships which can go into a cadastral database. The Standard does not define the actual structure of a database, and deals with none of the field definitions or software coding components of a physical design. For example, the cadastral standard provides a unique nation-wide identification of principal meridians. The names of the principal meridians have been standardized and are listed in the Standard document. In a physical format for a county or state that uses one of the principal meridians, it does not make sense to repeat that value for every record in the county or state. In this case the physical format does not include the principal meridian as defined in the Standard in the database. The value for the principal meridian can be generated and added upon data transfer or exchange. In another example, an organization may decide they want their physical database to combine bearings and distances and their units of measure in the same file as the record boundary. This might be done to accommodate a

computational package, to increase the ease of review of values, or to enhance search performance. The Cadastral Data Content Standard does not provide for this kind of physical database design and use. The physical structure of cadastral databases will be dealt with by the Cadastral Data Transfer Profile, which is currently in development, and is described in Section 6.

Links and References to Information on Data Modeling For more information on understanding data models, begin with the web sites for: Applied Information Science There is a commercial data modeling product from agpw, inc., known as Data Master. Though we have not reviewed it and cannot endorse the product, you may find it to be worth investigating. Published information on modeling includes: Bruce, T.A., Designing Quality Databases with IDEF1X Information Models, Dorset House, 1992. Chen, P.P.S., "The Entity-Relationship Model -- toward a unified view of data". ACM Transactions on Database Systems 1, 1, March 1976. Jackson, Michael A., System Development. Prentice Hall International, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1983. Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 184, the Standard for Integration Definition for Information Modeling, U.S. Department of Commerce, Technology Administration, National Institute of Standards and Technology, December 1993. One of the best short summaries of Bachman and Chen data modeling methods which we have found is in McDonnell Douglas' ProKit WORKBENCH Application Manual, Chapter 8, Data Modeler. This is a proprietary software documentation manual, so as far as we know it is not a book available for purchase. Contact McDonnell Douglas (1-800-225-7760) if you are interested. (Note: In April 2002 it was pointed out to us that this document is no longer easily available from McDonnel Douglas, and thus may be difficult to find.) Surprisingly, there is virtually no widely accessible published information on the Charles Bachman method of data modeling. A search on the subject of Bachman data modeling brought up the following articles:

Bachman Information Systems Data Base Management No. 6, The Entity Relationship Approach to Logical Data Base Design. Q.E.D. Monograph Series (Wellesley: Q.E.D. Information Science, Inc. 1977). C.W. Bachman "Data Structure Diagrams" Journal of ACM SIGBDP Vol 1 No 2 (March 1969) pages 4-10. McFadden & Hoffer _Database Management_, 3e, Benjamin Cummings, 1991, ISBN 0-8053-6040-9 or Date _An Introduction to Database Systems_, Volume 1, 5e, Addison Wesley, 1990, ISBN 0-201-51381-1 Charles W. Bachman: The Role Data Model Approach to Data Structures. 1-18, published in S. M. Deen, P. Hammersley: Proceedings International Conference on Data Bases, University of Aberdeen, July 1980. Heyden & Son, 1980, ISBN 0-85501-495-4.

This ends Course Sectin 4. Use the links below to return to the top of this page, or to go on to Section 5, or any of the other Modules.

A Comparison of Data Modeling Techniques David C. Hay

[This is a revision of a paper by the same title written in 1995. In addition to stylistic updates, this paper replaces all the object modeling techniques with the UML a new technique that is intended to replace at least all these.] Peter Chen first introduced entity/relationship modeling in 1976 [ Chen 1977]. It was a brilliant idea that has revolutionized the way we represent data. It was a first version only, however, and many people since then have tried to improve on it. A veritable plethora of data modeling techniques have been developed. Things became more complicated in the late 1980s with the advent of a variation on this theme called "object modeling". The net effect of all this was that there were now even more ways to model the structure of data. This was mitigated somewhat in the mid-1990's, with the introduction of the UML, a modeling technique intended to replace at least all the "object modeling" ones. As will be seen in this article, it is not quite up to replacing other entity/relationship approaches, but it has had a dramatic effect on the object modeling world. This article is intended to present the most important of these and to provide a basis for comparing them with each other. Regardless of the symbols used, data or object modeling is intended to do one thing: describe the things about which an organization wishes to collect data, along with the relationships among them. For this reason, all of the commonly used systems of notation fundamentally are convertible one to another. The major differences among them are aesthetic, although some make distinctions that others do not, and some do not have symbols to represent all situations. This is true for object modeling notations as well as entity/relationship notations. There are actually three levels of conventions to be defined in the data modeling arena: The first is syntactic, about the symbols to be used. These conventions are the primary focus of this article. The second defines the organization of model diagrams. Positional conventions dictate how entities are laid out. These will be discussed at the end of the article. And finally, there are conventions about how the meaning of a model may be conveyed. Semantic conventions describe standard ways for representing common business situations. These are not discussed here, but you can find more information about them in books by David Hay [1996] and Martin Fowler [1997]

These three sets of conventions are, in principle, completely independent of each other. Given any of the syntactic conventions described here, you can follow any of the available positional or semantic conventions. In practice, however, promoters of each syntactic convention typically also promote at least particular positional conventions. In evaluating syntactic conventions, it is important to remember that data modeling has two audiences. The first is the user community, that uses the models and their descriptions to verify that the analysts in fact understand their environment and their requirements. The second audience is the set of systems designers, who use the business rules implied by the models as the basis for their design of computer systems. Different techniques are better for one audience or the other. Models used by analysts must be clear and easy to read. This often means that these models may describe less than the full extent of detail available. First and foremost, they must be accessible by a non-technical viewer. Models for designers, on the other hand must be as complete and rigorous as possible, expressing as much as possible. The evaluation, then, will be based both on the technical completeness of each technique and on its readability. Technical completeness is in terms of the representation of:
o o o o o

Entities and attributes Relationships Unique identifiers Sub-types and super-types Constraints between relationships

A techniques readability is characterized by its graphic treatment of relationship lines and entity boxes, as well as its adherence to the general principles of good graphic design. Among the most important of the principles of graphic design is that each symbol should have only one meaning, which applies where ever that symbol is used, and that each concept should be represented by only one symbol. Moreover, a diagram should not be cluttered with more symbols than are absolutely necessary, and the graphics in a diagram should be intuitively expressive of the concepts involved.. [See Hay 98.] Each technique has strengths and weakness in the way it addresses each audience. As it happens, most are oriented more toward designers than they are toward the user community. These produce models that are very intricate and focus on making sure that all possible constraints are described. Alas, this is often at the expense of readability. This document presents seven notation schemes. For comparison purposes, the same example model is presented using each technique. Note that the UML is billed as an "object modeling" technique, rather than as a data (entity/relationship) modeling technique, but as you will see, its structures is fundamentally the same. This comparison is in terms of each techniques symbols for describing entities (or "object classes", for the

UML), attributes, relationships (or object-oriented "associations"), unique identifiers, sub-types and constraints between relationships. The following notations are presented here. At the end of the individual discussions is your authors argument in favor of Mr. Barkers approach for use in requirements analysis, along with his argument in favor of UML to support design.

Relationships Mr. Chens notation is unique among the techniques shown here in that a relationship is shown as a twodimensional symbol a rhombus on the line between two or more entities. Note that this relationship symbol makes it possible to maintain a "many-to-many" relationship without necessarily converting it into an associative or intersect entity. In effect, the relationship itself is playing the role of an associative entity. The relationship itself is permitted to have attributes. Note how "quantity", "actual price", and "line number" are attributes of the relationship Order-line in Figure 1.

Note also that relationships do not have to be binary. As many entities as necessary may be linked to a relationship rhombus. Cardinality/optionality In Mr. Chens original work, only one number appeared at each end, showing the maximum cardinality. That is, a relationship might be "one to many", with a "1" at one end and a "n" at the other. This would not indicate whether or not an occurrence of an entity had to have at least one occurrence of the other entity. In most cases, an occurrence of an entity that is related to one occurrence of another must be related to one, and an occurrence of an entity that is related to more than one may be related to none, so most of the time the lower bounds can be assumed. The event/event category model, however, is unusual. Having just a "1" next to event showing that an event is related to one event category would not show that it might be related to none. The "n" which shows that each event category is related to more than one event would not show that it must be related to at least one. For this reason, the technique can be extended to use two numbers at each end to show the minimum and maximum cardinalities. For example, the relationship party-order between purchase order and party, shows 1,1 at the purchase order end, showing that each purchase order must be with no less than one party and no more than one party. At the other end, "0,n" shows that a party may or may not be involved with any purchase orders, and could be involved with several. The event/event category model would have "0,1" at the event end, and "1,n" at the event category end. In an alternative notation, relationship names may be replaced with "E" if the existence of occurrences of the second entity requires the existence of a related occurrence of the first entity. Names Because relationships are clearly considered objects in their own right, their names tend to be nouns. The relationship between purchase-order and person or organization, for example, is called order-line. Sometimes a relationship name is simply a concatenation of the two entity names. For example partyorder relates party and purchase order. Entity and relationship names may be abbreviated. Unique identifiers A unique identifier is any combination of attributes and relationships that uniquely identify an occurrence of an entity. While Mr. Chen recognizes the importance of attributes as entity unique identifiers [Chen 1977, 23], his notation makes no provision for showing this. If the unique identifier of an entity includes a relationship to a second entity, he replaces the relationship name with "E", makes the line into the dependent entity an arrow, and draws a second box around this dependent entity. (Figure 2 shows how this would look if the relationship

to party were part of the unique identifier of purchas-order). This still does not identify any attributes that are part of the identifier.

Figure 2: Existence Dependent Relationship Sub-types A sub-type is a subset of the occurrences of another entity, its super-type. That is, an occurrence of a sub-type entity is also an occurrence of that entitys super-type. An occurrence of the super-type is also an occurrence of exactly one or another of the sub-types. Though not in Mr. Chens original work, this extension is described By Robert Brown [1993] and Mat Flavin [1981]. In this extension, sub-types are represented by separate entity boxes, each removed from its super-type and connected to it by an "isa" relationship. (Each occurrence of a sub-type "is a[n]" occurrence of the supertype.) The relationship lines are linked by a rhombus and each relationship to a sub-type has a bar drawn across it. In Figure 1, for example, party is a super-type, with person and organization as its sub-types. Thus an order-line must be either a product or a service. This isnt strictly correct, since an order line is the fact that a product or a service was ordered on a purchase-order. It is not the same thing as the product or service themselves. Constraints between relationships The most common case of constraints between relationships is the "exclusive or", meaning that each occurrence of the base entity must (or may) be related to occurrences of one other entity, but not more than one. These will be seen in most of the techniques which follow below. Mr. Chen does not deal with constraints directly at all. This must be done by defining an artificial entity and making the constrained entities into sub-types of that entity. This is shown in Figure 1 with the entity catalogue item, with its mutually exclusive sub-types product and service. Each purchase order has an orderline relationship with one catalogue item, where each catalogue item must be either a product or a service. Comments Mr. Chen was first, so it is not surprising that his technique does not express all the nuances that have been included in subsequent techniques. It does not annotate characteristics of attributes, and it does not show the identification of entities without sacrificing the names of the relationships.

While it does permit showing multiple inheritance and multiple type hierarchies, the multi-box approach to sub-types takes up a lot of room on the drawing, limiting the number of other entities that can be placed on it. It also requires a great deal of space to give a separate symbol to each attribute and each relationship. Moreover, it does not clearly convey the fact that an occurrence of a sub-type is an occurrence of a supertype.

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The Banking Industry Problem-Solution: Reduce Costs, Increase Profits by Data Mining and Modeling
Bruce Ratner, Ph.D.</STRONG In todays slow-moving economy the banking industry is in tough competitive boxing ring, in which they are getting hit with high customer attrition rates. And, achieving their goals reduce costs and increase profit is a matter of survival of the fittest. Fortuitously, their gargantuan volumes of transaction data gathered daily are the key ingredient for achieving their goals. High performance computing for discovering interesting and previously unknown information within the gargantuan data is needed as part of a tactical analytical strategy to build models to win their goals. Traditional statistical approaches are virtually ineffectual at data mining, i.e., uncovering undetected cost-reduction/profit-gaining predictive relationships. This knowledge is vitally necessary for building models for reducing costs, and increasing profits. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the strength of the data mining muscle of the genetic data-mining feature of the GenIQ Model. I discuss case studies, which use the body blows of genetic data mining to produce victorious cost-reduction, and profit-gaining models. For an eye-opening preview of the 9-step modeling process of GenIQ, click here. For FAQs about GenIQ, click here.

The Banking Industry Problem-Solution: Reduce Costs, Increase Profits by Data Mining and Modeling
Bruce Ratner, Ph.D.</STRONG In todays slow-moving economy the banking industry is in tough competitive boxing ring, in which they are getting hit with high customer attrition rates. And, achieving their goals reduce costs and increase profit is a matter of survival of the fittest. Fortuitously, their gargantuan volumes of transaction data gathered daily are the key ingredient for achieving their goals. High performance computing for discovering interesting and previously unknown information within the gargantuan data is needed as part of a tactical analytical strategy to build models to win their goals. Traditional statistical approaches are virtually ineffectual at data mining, i.e., uncovering undetected cost-reduction/profit-gaining predictive relationships. This knowledge is vitally necessary for building models for reducing costs, and increasing profits. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the strength of the data mining muscle of the genetic data-mining feature of the GenIQ Model. I discuss case studies, which use the body blows of genetic data mining to produce victorious cost-reduction, and profit-gaining models. For an eye-opening preview of the 9-step modeling process of GenIQ, click here. For FAQs about GenIQ, click here.

Demand Forecasting for Retail: A Genetic Approach

Bruce Ratner, Ph.D. Accurate demand forecasting is essential for retailers to minimize the risk of stores running out of a product, or not having enough of a popular brand, color or style. Preseason and in-season forecast errors account for 20 to 25 percent of losses in sales. Traditional demand forecasting methods for all stock-keeping units (SKUs) across all stores and all geographies have an inherent weakness of no ability to data mine the volumes of time-series data at the SKU-level. The purpose of this article is to present a machine learning approach the GenIQ Model for demand forecasting that has demonstrated superior results compared to the traditional techniques.

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