Chapter 12. The Conceptual Data Model

At this point in the design process, you should have a clear understanding of what you're setting out to achieve. You've defined the scope of the project, compiled a set of design criteria, and analyzed the work processes. Now it's time to start building the data model.

Remember that a conceptual data model contains a description of the entities, their attributes, and the relationships between them. It isn't a database schema, which describes the physical layout of the tables. You don't yet know enough to create this. You need to understand the user interface and the architecture that you'll use to implement the system before you can create the schema.