Detailed Course Outline
Course benefits:
Data modelling is normally assumed to be a technique employed in the initial stages of database design. Properly employed, data modelling will lead to the design of databases that hold the data required by the business to carry out its tasks in such a way that the business is presented with consistent, up-to-date and accurate information, whilst allowing for future changes in business practices.
But data modelling techniques can also be used to help to understand and document the information requirements of a business, irrespective of whether that is to lead to the development of a database or not. Data modelling is a powerful business analysis tool in its own right.
This two-day course teaches the key techniques of data modelling to prepare attendees to take their place in system development or business analysis teams. It will also be of benefit to business managers who may need to review data models.
This course is for
- Business Analysts
- System Designers
- Database Administrators
- Business staff involved with defining system requirements
Prerequisites:
There are no specific prerequisites for this course but an appreciation of the need for well-ordered data and the difficulties of developing such would be an advantage.
This course teaches the key techniques of data modelling and data analysis that allow analysts to document information needs and system developers to satisfy the business information needs.
On successful completion of the course, attendees will be able to:
- Identify the information requirements for a business system and develop a model to represent these
- Carry out accurate relational data analysis to remove data redundancy, ambiguity and anomalies
- Document and build logical models based on the business relationships of data requirements
- The roles of a data model.
- The basic data modelling concepts of entity type, attribute, domain and relationship.
- Exclusive relationships.
- The use of super- and sub-types.
- The development of an entity-relationship diagram.
- Identification of attributes and their associated domains.
- Relational data analysis to third normal form.
- An overview of higher normal forms (Boyce-Codd, fourth, fifth and sixth normal forms)
- Selecting the appropriate level of abstraction for a data model.
- Comparison of data modelling notations in use, including IDEF1X, Information Engineering, Chen and UML Class Models.
The course will be delivered through a mix of presentations, discussions and exercises. The course will use the data modelling notation used in the ORACLE® case tool and in the later versions of SSADM (Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method).