Business Intelligence/Data Mart Data Model


 * Purpose:
 * Input: List of KPI's, Dimensions and Budgets
 * Activities: Create an ERD for the frame's data mart
 * Outputs: ERD and Relational data model
 * Documentation: ERD and Relational data model diagrams

Data Model Defined

A data model is a collection of concepts used to describe the structure of a database. This means the data types, relationships and constraints that should hold for the data. Data models are categories as (Elmasri and Navathe 2005):


 * Conceptual: provide concepts that are related to the way users understand the data
 * Physical: provide concepts that describe how the data is stored in the computer
 * Representational/Implementation: Concepts understood by end users but that are not too far removed from the way data is organized within the computer

This chapter focuses on creating a conceptual data model. Conceptual data models use concepts such as entities, attributes and relationships. Chen proposed the entity-relationship data model in 1976.

Entity: Real-world object or concept Relationship: Property of interest that further describes an entity Attribute: An associated among two or more entities

Representation data models include the widely used relationship data model.