Modelling Business Information

Table of contents

1. Front Cover
2. Half Title
3. BCS, THE CHARTERED INSTITUTE FOR IT
4. Title Page
5. Copyright Page
6. Contents
7. List of figures and tables
8. About the Author
9. Foreword
10. Acknowledgements
11. Glossary
12. Introduction
13. PART 1 THE BASICS
14. 1. WHY BUSINESS ANALYSTS SHOULD MODEL INFORMATION
15. What is business analysis?
16. Information and data
17. The importance for a business analyst of understanding information needs
18. The role of models in business analysis
19. Data models and data
20. Entity relationship modelling
21. Class modelling
22. Use of data models in business analysis
23. What makes a good data model?
24. Introducing data analysis
25. 2. MODELLING THE THINGS OF INTEREST TO THE BUSINESS AND THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THEM
26. Entities and objects
27. Naming of entity types and object classes
28. Introduction to relationships and associations
29. Relationship notation in entity relationship models
30. Association notation in UML class models
31. Degrees of cardinality and optionality
32. Multiple relationships and associations
33. Recursive relationships and reflexive associations
34. Exercises for Chapter 2
35. 3. MODELLING MORE COMPLEX RELATIONSHIPS
36. The problems with many-to-many relationships and associations
37. Resolving entity relationship model many-to-many relationships
38. Resolving class model many-to-many associations
39. The ‘bill of materials’ structure
40. Mutually exclusive relationships and associations
41. Generalisation and specialisation in entity relationship models
42. Generalisation and specialisation in class models
43. Aggregation and composition
44. Exercises for Chapter 3
45. 4. DRAWING AND VALIDATING INFORMATION MODEL DIAGRAMS
46. The model drawing process
47. Identifying the entity types or the object classes
48. Identifying the relationships or associations
49. Drawing the initial diagram
50. Validating the diagram
51. Exercises for Chapter 4
52. 5. RECORDING INFORMATION ABOUT THINGS
53. Revisiting entity types, object classes, relationships and associations
54. Introduction to attributes
55. The naming of attributes
56. Entity type, object class or attribute?
57. Unique identifiers
58. Domains
59. The UML extended attribute notation
60. Showing operations on class models
61. Exercises for Chapter 5
62. 6. RATIONALISING DATA USING NORMALISATION
63. What is normalisation?
64. The relational model of data
65. The rules of normalisation
66. Starting the normalisation process
67. First normal form
68. Second normal form
69. Third normal form
70. The third normal form data model
71. Candidate keys, primary keys and alternate keys
72. The relationship of normalisation to modelling
73. Exercises for Chapter 6
74. PART 2 SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL
75. 7. OTHER MODELLING NOTATIONS
76. The IDEF1X notation
77. The Information Engineering notation
78. The Chen notation
79. Comparison of the notations
80. 8. THE NAMING OF ARTEFACTS ON INFORMATION MODELS
81. The naming of entity types or object classes
82. The naming of domains
83. The naming of attributes
84. The naming of relationships in Ellis-Barker entity relationship models
85. The naming of associations on UML class models
86. 9. INFORMATION MODEL QUALITY
87. Genericity and specificity in models
88. The nine characteristics of a good data model
89. The six principles of high quality data models
90. The five dimensions of data model quality
91. The layout of models
92. 10. CORPORATE INFORMATION AND DATA MODELS
93. The problems
94. Principles for the development of a corporate model
95. 11. DATA AND DATABASES
96. The data landscape
97. Databases
98. 12. BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
99. The data warehouse
100. The multidimensional model of data
101. Dimensional modelling
102. 13. ADVANCES IN SQL (OR WHY BUSINESS ANALYSTS SHOULD NOT BE IN THE WEEDS)
103. The basics of SQL
104. New SQL data types
105. The future
106. Implications for business analysts and information modellers
107. 14. TAKING A REQUIREMENTS INFORMATION MODEL INTO DATABASE DESIGN
108. First-cut database design stage
109. Optimised database design stage
110. APPENDICES
111. Appendix A: Table of equivalences
112. Appendix B: Bibliography
113. Appendix C: Solutions to the exercises
114. Index
115. Back Cover