David C. Hay

President

Essential Strategies, Inc.

Data Model Patterns

A veteran of the Information Industry since the days of punched cards, paper tape, and teletype machines, Dave Hay has been producing data models to support strategic information planning and requirements planning for over thirteen years. He has worked in a variety of industries, including, among others, power generation, clinical pharmaceutical research, oil refining, forestry, and broadcast. He is President of Essential Strategies, Inc., a consulting firm dedicated to helping clients define corporate information architecture, identify requirements, and plan strategies for the implementation of new systems. He is the author of the book, Data Model Patterns: Conventions of Thought, published by Dorset House, and more recently, producer of Data Model Patterns: Data Architecture in a Box, an Oracle Designer repository containing his model templates. He is a member of The Business Rules Group, DAMA International, and the International Oracle User's Group, as well as local chapters of these.

Data Model Patterns

A data model is supposed to represent that which is truly fundamental to the structure of an enterprise. If it succeeds at this, it is going to look remarkably similar to data models of other enterprises, even in other industries. There are standard structures that apply to all businesses in all industries.

David Hay will present some of those structures. Using these standard structures can greatly shorten the time required to develop a data model, since the process is now one of identifying which standard models apply, rather than developing the models from scratch. This doesn't mean that models for all companies are identical - just that they will have similar structures as a starting point, before variations are accounted for.

After a brief introduction to the three kinds of modeling conventions, the patterns will be presented at two levels. First will be a presentation of structures that most people see: people and organizations, products, contracts, activities, and so forth. The second half of the presentation will be about advanced topics - stepping up a level of abstraction to deal with complex data such as that involved in such areas as clinical research, material safety data sheets, and so forth.