Data Modeling Made Simple / 2nd edtion

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.