I went to a 2 day seminar put on by the Alberta Data Architects called Data Modeling MasterClass. It was led by Graeme Simsion. I thought it was a great two days. Graeme lead the class through a review of his book: Data Modeling Essentials: 3rd Edition. While you cannot cover a book in two days, we got a thorough review at 50,000 ft. I thought the personal anecdotes were superb Graeme has been around the world (literally and figuratively) in his work on data models and there are probably hardly any (okay, none) business requirements that he has not seen. Themes from his presentation are:
- gather business requirements, get clarification and gather business requirements
- build a model several times; each differently. Each is not supposed to be right; it is just supposed to give you perspective.
- don't start with a blank page. Build on the strength/wisdom of others
- Communication is paramount; between business staff, data modelers, dba's, etc. Just talk people!
- Keep up with technology; you never know when 'cool things' are going to show up in a production environment.
- Did I mention communication?
There are more things I want to review/talk about but I gotta hit the web with some searches that were triggered from yesterday.
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