Defining the Conceptual View

The conceptual view focuses on capturing the high-level structure of the business, representing the entities and their relationships without getting into specific details of the system or technical implementations. This is the first step in developing a data model.

1. Identify and Name Business Entities

• Entities represent significant business objects (e.g., Customer, Order, Product, Employee) that need to be captured in the system.
• Naming entities should align with the business’s common terminology.

2. Identify Super-type / Sub-types

• This step involves defining any hierarchies or relationships between entities.
  • Example: “Customer” could be a super-type with sub-types like “Individual Customer” and “Business Customer.”
• Use the “X is a kind of Y” format to define these relationships.
• It is often beneficial to isolate class hierarchies into separate subject areas to maintain clarity in the model.

3. Draft, Review, and Refine Entity Business Definitions

• Write business definitions for each entity, explaining their role and significance in the business context. This ensures shared understanding across stakeholders.
• Review these definitions with business users and refine them based on feedback.

4. Identify and Specify Examples, Synonyms, Acronyms

• Identify any alternative terms that could refer to the same entity (synonyms, acronyms).
  • Example: “Customer” might also be referred to as “Client.”
• Provide examples of entities to help stakeholders understand their meaning.

5. Document Distinctions from Closely Related Terms

• It is important to differentiate similar or closely related terms, ensuring that entities are not confused with one another.
  • Example: “Order” vs. “Invoice.”

6. Assign Primary Subject Area

• Group entities into subject areas based on their relevance to different parts of the business.
  • Example: “Customer” may belong to the Sales subject area, while “Product” may belong to the Merchandising subject area.

7. Assign Data Stewardship Accountability

• Assign responsibility for each entity to a data steward. Data stewards are responsible for maintaining the accuracy, privacy, and security of data related to that entity.

8. Define Potential Business Identifiers

• Identify possible business identifiers for each entity (e.g., Customer ID, Order Number) that will be used to uniquely identify records.

9. Define Initial Draft Primary Key Attribute

• Propose a primary key for each entity. This is the attribute or combination of attributes that uniquely identifies each record in the entity.

10. Identify and Specify Business Relationships

• Define the relationships between entities.
  • Example: A “Customer” places an “Order.”
• Include the cardinality of the relationships (e.g., one-to-many, many-to-many).