The Practical Guide to Business Process Reengineering Using Idefo

Appendix D. SADT Data Models, IDEFO, and IDEF1X

SADT data modeling is closely related to activity modeling. With a data model, the entire system is modeled top-down, but this time the data elements are represented by boxes that are decomposed into subcategories of the parent data group. The activities become the arrows that show how the data is created and used. The control arrows become the activities that control how the data is called for or used. The mechanism becomes the device that holds the data (database and storage device).

Data decomposition of an SADT data model shows the enterprise’s data from a top-down perspective and identifies which activities directly use and create each data element. In this way, an SADT data model represents ...