Modelling Business Information

Keith Gordon is an independent consultant and lecturer specialising in data management and business analysis. He has spent over 50 years in technical, education and training environments as an engineer, computer consultant, data manager, business analyst, education and training manager.

'“Modelling Business Information” by Keith Gordon, is aimed at those who are new to business analysis or information modelling. Keith draws on a wealth of experience in information management, both as a practitioner, and as a lecturer with the Open University in his writing.The first six chapters provide an accessible and clear foundation in the topic covering the reasons for developing information models, the basic elements of entity-relationship diagrams, how to develop an information model from basic information requirements, and finally how to normalise existing data. I particularly like that it uses two graphical notations, the Barker-Ellis notation, noted for its readability, and the ubiquitous Unified Modelling Language notation, which helps to demonstrate that there are different notations that entity-relationship models can be developed in. This first part of the book also takes care to cover the syllabus for the Data Analysis certificate that is part of the scheme for the BCS Advanced International Diploma in Business Analysis.The second part of the book covers a range of more advanced topics from naming conventions and yet more entity-relationship model notations, to considerations of quality in information models, corporate data models, modelling for business intelligence applications, and finally goes on to look at data and database topics including an overview of SQL, and moving to database design and optimisation.Overall, the book provides an excellent grounding in the full range of topics related to information modelling.'

• IntroductionPart 1: The BasicsChapter 1: Why business analysts should model information Chapter 2: Modelling the things of interest to the business and the relationships between themChapter 3: Modelling more complex relationships  Chapter 4: Drawing and validating data model diagrams Chapter 5: Recording information about things Chapter 6: Rationalising data using normalisation Part 2: Supplementary MaterialChapter 7: Other modelling notationsChapter 8: The naming of artefacts on information modelsChapter 9: Information model qualityChapter 10: Corporate information and data modelsChapter 11: Data and databasesChapter 12: Business intelligenceChapter 13: Advances in SQL (or why business analysts should not be in the weeds)Chapter 14: Taking a requirements information model into database designAppendix A: Table of equivalencesAppendix B: BibliographyAppendix C: Solutions to the exercises