Database 1 L3

COM204 Databases
L03 – Data Models
Database Principles: Fundamentals of Design, Implementation, and Management, 10 th Edition, Coronel, Morris, & Rob
In this lecture, you will learn:
• What data models are and their importance
• The basic data-modeling building blocks
• Business rules
• Types of data models
• Levels of abstraction
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Data Models
• Data models
– Simple representations/abstractions of complex
real world data structures
– Usually depicted in the form of graphics
– First step in the design of any database
– Main function is to enable understanding of
complexities of the real world environment
– Represents data structures and their
characteristics, relations and constraints
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The Importance of Data Models
• Communication tools
• Facilitate interaction among the designer, the
applications programmer, and the end user
• Improves understanding of the organization
• End-users have different views and needs for data
• Data model organizes data for various users
• Blueprint of the database much like floor plans when
building a house
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Basic Data Modeling Building Blocks
• Entity - anything about which data are to be

collected and stored
• Attribute - a characteristic of an entity
• Relationship - describes an association among
entities
• One-to-many (1:M or 1..*) relationship
• Many-to-many (M:N or *..*) relationship
• One-to-one (1:1 or 1..1) relationship
• Constraint - a restriction placed on the data
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Business Rules
• Brief, precise, and unambiguous descriptions
of policies, procedures, or principles within a
specific organization
• Apply to any organization that stores and uses
data to generate information
• Description of operations that help to create
and enforce actions within that organization’s
environment
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Sources of Business Rules
• Company managers
• Policy makers
• Department managers
• Written documents
– Procedures
– Standards
– Operations manuals
• Interviews with end users
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Data Model Components from
Business Rules
• Generally, nouns translate into entities
• Verbs translate into relationships among
entities
• Relationships are bi-directional
• Example: “a customer may generate many
invoices” contains 2 nouns (customer and
invoices) and a verb (generate). Therefore,
customer and invoices are entities and
generate is the relationship between them
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Naming Conventions
• All objects(entities) should have a unique
name
• Entity names should be descriptive of the
object and terminologies used should be
familiar to the end users
• It is good practice to prefix attribute name
with the name or abbreviation of its entity
Entity Attribute
CUSTOMER CUS_LAST_NAME
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Types of Data Models
• Hierarchical and network models
• Relational model
• Entity relationship model
• Object oriented model
• Object/relational and XML
• Big data and NoSQL
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The Relational Model
• Implemented through RDBMS
• Table (relations)
– Matrix consisting of a series of row/column
intersections
– Related to each other through sharing a common
entity characteristic
• Relational diagram
– Representation of relational database’s entities,
attributes within those entities, and relationships
between those entities
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The Entity Relationship Model
• Widely accepted and adapted graphical tool for data modeling
• Introduced by Chen in 1976
• Entity relationship diagram (ERD)
– Uses graphic representations to model database components
– Entity is mapped to a relational table
• Entity instance (or occurrence) is a row in a table
• Entity set is a collection of like entities
• Connectivity labels types of relationships
– Diamond connected to related entities through a relationship
line
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Emerging Data Models
• Big Data
– A movement to find new and better ways to
manage large amounts of Web-generated data
– Deriving useful business information from web
data
– Web data: browsing patterns, customer
preferences, social media data from sources such
as facebook
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Emerging Data Models
• NoSQL
– Not based on the relational data model
– Supports distributed database architecture
– Provides high scalability, high availability, and fault
tolerance
– Supports very large amounts of sparse data
– Geared towards performance rather than transaction
consistency
– Every time you search for a product on amazon, send
message on Facebook or watch a YouTube video, you
are using a NoSQL database
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The Evolution of Data Models
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Data Abstraction Levels
• External model
– End users’ view of the data environment
• Conceptual model
– Represents global view of the entire database
• Internal model
– Representation of the database as “seen” by the DBMS
• Physical model
– Describes the way data are saved on storage media
such as disks or tapes
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Summary
• A data model is a simple representation of a
complex real-world data environment
• Basic data modeling components are:
– Entities
– Attributes
– Relationships
– Constraints
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Summary (continued)
• Types of Data Models
– Hierarchical and network models
– Relational model
– Entity relationship model
– Object oriented model
– Object/relational and XML
– Big data and NoSQL
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Summary (continued)
• Data Abstraction levels
– External model
– Conceptual model
– Internal model
– Physical model
COM304 Databases 23
?
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COM204 Databases

L03 – Data Models

• Entity - anything about which data are to be

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