Data Modelling Terms

Any characteristic that identifies, qualifies, classifies, quantifies or describes a Relation (Entity).
For example “Forename” is an attribute of the Entity “Person”.

A Technology-agnostic model of the key Concepts of importance to an enterprise and the relationships between them.
Business Concept Models do not show Attributes nor Cardinality.
A Business Concept Model is not considered complete without a Business Glossary entry for each Concept in the model.

A repository that contains definitions of all Concepts (Entities) and all Attributes in strictly business terms (i.e., Technology-agnostic).

In a relationship between Entity A and Entity B, the Cardinality specifies the number of B that can be related to A. For example:
A Room has one or many Doors.
A Room has zero or many Windows.
An Employee works in one and only one Department.

A named thing of significance to an enterprise about which information must be held to support business operations.
AKA Entity (in a Logical Data Model).

A constraint on the value of an Attribute that defines its nature, such as Text, Date, Whole Number, etc..

A named thing of significance to an enterprise about which information must be held to support business operations.
AKA Concept (in a Business Concept Model) or Relation (in a Logical Data Model).

A Relation (Entity) is in 1NF when all the values of its attributes are both atomic (cannot be broken down into further attributes) and scalar (cannot contain more than one value).

An Attribute (or combination of attributes) in a Relation (Entity) that identifies another Relation (Entity) , or even the Relation (Entity) itself.

A detailed model of all the Entities that are of significance to an enterprise, their Attributes, the Relationships between them, and the Cardinality of those Relationships.

A technique for making data structures more flexible while reducing duplication and redundancy.
AKA “Relational Data Analysis”.

The Attribute, or set of Attributes, that uniquely identifies one instance of an Entity.

The basic structure of a relational model of data, visualised in a Logical Data Model as an Entity (Concept) with a list of its Attributes and in a Physical Data Model as a table with rows and columns.

The nature of an association between two Relations (Entities).

A Relation (Entity) is in 2NF when it is already in 1NF and every non-Primary Key attribute depends on the full Primary Key.

A model is Technology-agnostic if it is defined strictly in business terms without specifying, or even implying, the technology that will be used to implement that model.

A Relation (Entity) is in 3NF when it is already in 2NF and each Attribute not part of the Primary Key does not depend on an Attribute that is also not part of the Primary Key.