data model

[Patrick Durusau <pdurusau@emory.edu>]

Greetings!

Well, first of the week and time for a new term to be defined for the 
XMLvoc TC! Hope to have a second one out later this week!

Term: data model

Wildes: no luck

FOLDOC says (in part): A data model says what information is to be 
contained in a database, how the information will be used,
and how the items in the database will be related to each other.

TechEncyclopedia: A description of the organization of a database. It is 
often created as an entity relationship diagram. Today's modeling tools 
allow the attributes and tables (fields and records) to be graphically 
created. The SQL code that defines the data structure (schema) in the 
database is automatically created from the visual representation.

Note that the issue of permissions to use the definitions from 
TechEncyclopedia has not been resolved.

The only hesitation I have with the FOLDOC and TechEncyclopedia 
definitions is the tying of data model to database. That is certainly 
important for databases, but I don't see the term as being limited to 
databases.

Proposed definition: A description of an organization of information 
objects and how they are related (if at all) to each other.

Hope everyone is at the start of a great week!

Patrick

-- 
Patrick Durusau
Director of Research and Development
Society of Biblical Literature
Patrick.Durusau@sbl-site.org
Co-Editor, ISO 13250, Topic Maps -- Reference Model