Len Silverston - The Data Model Resource Book, Vol. 3: Universal Patterns for Data Modeling

The Data Model Resource Book, Volume 3: Universal Patterns for Data Modeling

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Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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Copyright 2009 by Len Silverston and Paul Agnew.

Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-0-470-17845-4

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To my amazing and loving wife, Annette, and my wonderful daughters, Danielle and Michaela

Len Silverston

To my mother, Breda, and in loving memory of my father, Tom

Paul Agnew

Advance Praise for The Data Model Resource Book, Volume 3

Len and Paul look beneath the superficial issues of data modeling and have produced a work that is a must for every serious designer and manager of an IT project.

Bill Inmon

World-renowned expert, speaker, and author on data warehousing and widely recognized as the father of data warehousing

The Data Model Resource Book, Volume 3: Universal Patterns for Data Modeling is a great source for reusable patterns you can use to save a tremendous amount of time, effort, and cost on any data modeling effort. Len Silverston and Paul Agnew have provided an indispensable reference of very high-quality patterns for the most foundational types of data model structures. This book represents a revolutionary leap in moving the data modeling profession forward.

Ron Powell

Cofounder and Editorial Director of the Business Intelligence Network

After we model a Customer, Product, or Order, there is still more about each of these that remains to be captured, such as roles they play, classifications in which they belong, or states in which they change. The Data Model Resource Book, Volume 3: Universal Patterns for Data Modeling clearly illustrates these common structures. Len Silverston and Paul Agnew have created a valuable addition to our field, allowing us to improve the consistency and quality of our models by leveraging the many common structures within this text.

Steve Hoberman

Best-Selling Author of Data Modeling Made Simple

The large national health insurance company I work at has actively used these data patterns and the (Universal Data Models) UDM, ahead of this book, through Len Silverston's UDM Jump Start engagement. The patterns have found their way into the core of our Enterprise Information Model, our data warehouse designs, and progressively into key business function databases. We are getting to reuse the patterns across projects and are reaping benefits in understanding, flexibility, and time-to-market. Thanks so much.

David Chasteen

Enterprise Information Architect

Reusing proven data modeling design patterns means exactly that. Data models become stable, but remain very flexible to accommodate changes.

We have had the fortune of having Len and Paul share the patterns that are described in this book via our engagements with Universal Data Models, LLC. These data modeling design patterns have helped us to focus on the essential business issues because we have leveraged these reusable building blocks for many of the standard design problems. These design patterns have also helped us to evaluate the quality of data models for their intended purpose. Many times there are a lot of enhancements required. Too often the very specialized business-oriented data model is also implemented physically. This may have significant drawbacks to flexibility. I'm looking forward to increasing the data modeling design pattern competence within Nokia with the help of this book.

Teemu Mattelmaki

Chief Information Architect, Nokia

Once again, Len Silverston, this time together with Paul Agnew, has made a valuable contribution to the body of knowledge about data models, and the act of building sound data models. As a professional data modeler, and teacher of data modeling for almost three decades, I have always been aware that I had developed some familiar mental patterns which I acquired very early in my data modeling experience. When teaching data modeling, we use relatively simple workshops, but they are carefully designed so the students will see and acquire a lot of these basic patternstemplates that they will recog- nize and can use to interpret different subject matter into data model form quickly and easily. I've always used these patterns in the course of facilitating data modeling sessions; I was able to recognize Ah, this is just like , and quickly apply a pattern that I'd seen before. But, in all this time, I've never sat down and clearly categorized and documented what each of these patterns actually was in such a way that they could be easily and clearly communicated to others; Len and Paul have done exactly that . As in the other Data Model Resource Book s, the thinking and writing is extraordinarily clear and understandable. I personally would have been very proud to have authored this book, and I sincerely applaud Len and Paul for another great contribution to the art and science of data modeling. It will be of great value to any data modeler.