Data Modeling Made Simple: A Practical Guide for Business and It Professionals (Take It With You) |
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| Steve Hoberman |
| October 2009,
, Paperback, ISBN 0977140067
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Review-Date: 2/19/2011 Rating: 5 Summary: Absolutely Great!
This excellent book delivers on its promise. That promise is to provide a readable and accessible approach to the vital business process of data modeling. Hoberman has accomplished this admirable task within the corpus of this important text better than any other author I‘ve ever encountered. And I‘ve been involved in logical data modeling and relational database design for now over twenty–five years.
Here is my most emphatic endorsement of this important book. I intend to disseminate the teachings of this book to as many interested parties as are willing to learn. Hoberman has accomplished a huge and terribly important task in support of the craft of data modeling. And I intend henceforth to sing his praises in this regard. I would now strongly recommend this important book to any business person whose responsibilities include, or are in any way related to, effective logical data modeling and relational database design. God bless.
Review-Date: 7/7/2010 Rating: 5 Summary: Wow!
I wish I had found this book earlier! I have tried understanding data modeling in the past, only to be confounded on how to generate value in real world. This book makes that real life applicability possible.
Following are my favorites about this book:
1. This book makes you ‘think‘ data. Each concept is articulated in clear, concise, and practical words, and shows how to make sense of it in the real world.
2. Brings out the context of why, what and how about data modeling in a practical way.
3. There are recommendations on how and when to use certain techniques.
4. Gives a well rounded and practicable context on data/data modeling, the interactions that surround the business of receiving, providing and eliciting data, in a sense the various modes and settings that data communication and data modeling occurs in, and how to deal with it.
5. Gives you a new perspective on ‘data‘ and ‘data modeling‘ (Wanted to leave this point for last, as this is the most profound one out of all). Once absorbed, its so simple, makes you wonder why it was difficult in the past.
The second edition, also talks about capturing requirements and its various methods. In fact, I am embarking on a data requirements project and find these techniques extremely useful.
The conversational style doesnot teach but involves the reader. After the book has been read, its very clear what data modeling is , what it constitutes of, what is the context it happens in, why its important to model data and how the decomposition process works.
All in all, this book contains a wealth of information that can be used right away and is a invaluable resource.
Review-Date: 6/29/2010 Rating: 5 Summary: Perfect Introduction to the Discipline
This is a great book for anyone new to the world of data modeling. Fun and interesting, it brings the reader up to speed on important concepts, keeping things moving with easy to understand examples. It can be read relatively quickly, yet covers all the essentials and more.
When project managers ask me to recommend a book on data modeling for new team members, this is it.
Experienced modelers will also appreciate Hoberman‘s fresh take, and maybe learn a few things along the way.
Review-Date: 11/15/2009 Rating: 5 Summary: The title is accurate!
I have taught data modeling at local colleges from thick, expensive books. I wish I had used this one instead. The examples begin with business cards and ice cream cones –– things people know –– instead of dropping the reader into the middle a major corporation.
The writing style is simple, clean and chatty. Each chapter ends with a list of the key points, so you check yourself. What surprised me is how much he covered without giving you the feeling that you were being buried by too much technical stuff at once.
In short, the title was accurate –– it really did make Data Modeling simple!
Review-Date: 10/27/2009 Rating: 5 Summary: Helps You Communicate With Your Business Partner
The subtitle, "A Practical Guide for Business and IT Professionals", describes an important reason to read this book. Often it is hard to make Business People understand why a Data Model is as valuable to them as it is to the Database Administrators who will ultimately build the physical database. Steve Hoberman gives us questions to ask the Business that will allow them to fully understand their needs and allow us to capture and communicate those requirements in a form known as a Logical Data Model.
I would recommend this book for those wanting to know more about data models because it is easy to read and understand. At the same time I would recommend it for experienced data professionals because it reinforces and reminds us of the concepts and practices we should all be following as we create our "blueprints" for data.
Review-Date: 10/27/2009 Rating: 5 Summary: Extremely comprehensive yet still Simple
I think very highly of Data Modeling Made Simple (the first edition), so when this second edition came out I had great expectations – which were not only met but also exceeded. Although this second edition is more than twice the number of pages as the first edition, it is still an easy read.
Here are my favorite things about this book:
1. Clearly delivers on its ten objectives. Read the back cover and you will understand the key takeaways you will get after reading the book. After I read the book, I went back over each of these objectives and I was able to check each of these off as accomplished. Everything from justifying the model to building data models to assessing data models was knowledge I gleaned from the book. If you are interested in just one or a subset of these ten objectives, read the Read Me First section and it will reference the sections and chapters you need to read to meet your specific objective.
2. More examples more thoroughly presented. The first edition took a business card example from beginning to end. This edition further expands the business card example and adds several other examples including an ice cream example and many real world examples. The author uses spreadsheets to illustrate many modeling examples, and I too have found spreadsheets to be a very effective way to communicate data and business rules.
3. Data Model Scorecard. The first edition touched on the Scorecard which is the author‘s technique to reviewing a data model. This second edition goes into detail including providing the template which I can use on my modeling assignments to review my models.
4. Treating a dimensional model as more than just a physical data model. Many texts treat the dimensional as only a physical data model yet there is a business level that this book illustrates at both the subject area and logical levels.
5. Getting other Greats for free. Bill Inmon, Graeme Simsion, and Michael Blaha have all written chapters in this book. I have already starting using Simsion‘s technique of a diary on my assignments and found it very useful.
My only area for improvement would be to expand the book with more modeling conventions such as ORM and IDEF1X. There is a chapter on UML though that I did find informative. I question however if adding these extra notations would detract from the book‘s simplicity.
Overall, an excellent read that I would recommend to every business or techie that works with data.
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