The Logical Data Model approach

The Data Model gives us the means to describe the information held by the system and its inter-relationships. In the following figure we show the components of the Logical Data Model (LDM).

Each of the components above may be documented: Entities as Entity Descriptions Relationships as Relationship Descriptions Attributes as Attribute Descriptions During the phases of strategy, requirements analysis and design we make our Logical Data Model Product Breakdown Structure (PBS) - Identify the entities of the database - Identify the entities relationships - Build the data model During the phase of implementation we make - the entities with their attributes (tables creation) - the normalisation process for each table of data model - the work that identifys the primary and foreign keys - the documentation of the system entities, relationships, and attributes. During the phase of integration and distribution we make - the validation of the data model with business rules and with users - the work for the formal Quality Assurance - all necessary modifications required to integrate the final system operation - the work of database distribution to users - the work to increase the database performance