Requirements Analysis: From Business Views to Architecture

Chapter 3. Column One: Data

The first column of the Architecture Framework is about data. Data are all of those numbers and letters (and now pictures and sounds) that computers manipulate. The history of our industry is one of an evolution of our attitude toward data.

This chapter begins by linking the Architecture Framework with an understanding of perspectives on data that preceded it by twelve years. It then provides a brief history of data architecture and an exposition of different modeling techniques, before elaborating on where the techniques fit in the Framework. After that is a discussion of the “normalization” process and a few words about data modeling conventions.

Views of Data

As shown in Figure 3.1, the Architecture Framework shows ...