Purpose

The purpose of this document is to provide an understanding of the benefits of good data management to Information Technology and the business areas of corporate. Data Modeling and Data Management is an integral part of the overall project planning and helps assure that the end result will be what the business wants and needs to be successful.

About Data Modeling

High level Conceptual design should be an integral part of the feasibility Phase or the earliest phases of a project. This allows for better understanding of the business process and helps the data analyst to more quickly produce the appropriate level of the model throughout the project phases. The model is only one part of developing a system. The analysis of processes is equally important. Process models describe how something is done.

It is important to develop both data models and process models at the same time. Discussion of the process to be performed by the system uncovers data requirements. Discussion of the data normally uncovers additional process requirements. Process modeling ties directly with the initiative of aligning, selecting and managing processes to achieve business excellence.

Data Modeling is one process of Data Management. It is an integral part of requirement analysis that clarifies and details policy and information requirements of a business function (or group of functions) such as a project. Data Modeling facilitates building of an integrated understanding of an organization’s overall information requirements and data resources by describing information structures and capturing business rules in order to specify information system requirements. A data model represents a balance between the specific needs of a particular implementation project and the general needs of the business area that required it.

When created with the full participation of business and systems professionals, the data model can provide many benefits. These benefits generally fall into two classes:

1. Those primarily associated with the model (the product of the effort)
2. Those associated with the process of creating the model (the process of the effort). 

Why is Data Modeling worthwhile?

• Data modeling seeks to maximize return on the significant costs of gathering, storing, processing and retrieval of information.
• A data model is implementation independent, so it does not require that the implementation is in any particular database platform or programming language.