Data Modeling Made Simple will provide the business or IT professional with a practical working knowledge of data modeling concepts and best practices. This book is written in a conversational style that encourages you to read it from start to finish and master these ten objectives:
- Know when a data model is needed and which type of data model is most effective for each situation
- Read a data model of any size and complexity with the same confidence as reading a book
- Build a fully normalized relational data model, as well as an easily navigatable dimensional model
- Apply techniques to turn a logical data model into an efficient physical design
- Leverage several templates to make requirements gathering more efficient and accurate
- Explain all ten categories of the Data Model Scorecard
- Learn strategies to improve your working relationships with others
- Appreciate the impact unstructured data has, and will have, on our data modeling deliverables
- Learn basic UML concepts
- Put data modeling in context with XML, metadata, and agile development
Book Review by Johnny Gay
In this book review, I address each section in the book and provide what I found most valuable as a data modeler. I compare, as I go, how the book's structure eases the new data modeler into the subject much like an instructor might ease a beginning swimmer into the pool.
This book begins like a Dan Brown novel. It even starts out with the protagonist, our favorite data modeler, lost on a dark road somewhere in France. In this case, what saves him isn't a cipher, but of all things, something that's very much like a data model in the form of a map! The author deems they are both way-finding tools.