Data Modeling for Not Yet Techies

Data modeling is the analysis of the data that is used in a business and the identification of the relationships between data. For instance, in analyzing how to come up with the cost of good sold accounting figure, you would have to plug in the total amount of money spent on the raw materials used to make your final products. Data modeling is the first step in object oriented programming.

Data modeling helps you define the classes that provide the templates for program objects. For instance, any accountant can tell you that the cost of raw materials is part of the cost of good sold, but the programmer must have a model for where the data is coming from. The raw materials buying department have their own set of records. The programmer must know where that data is kept, how to retrieve and use it to plug it into the program for calculating cost of goods sold.

It's the blueprint for data flow within an organization.

It uses one important tool called normalization. It is also essential for project management.

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is expected to become the universally used data modeling format.

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