Entity-Relationship Modeling

In 1976, Peter Chen published the first specification for viewing relational data as a collection of relationships between entities in “The Entity Relationship Model—Toward a Unified View of Data.” Chen's work (along with that of other theorists such as Hammer and McLeod, proponents of the Semantic Data Model) gave rise to E-R diagrams—pictorial depictions of entity relationships—now a mainstay of logical data modeling.

One of the first things you'll discover about E-R modeling is that there's no sequential path from business processes to fully defined logical data models. Constructing entity relationships requires a lot of thought. It's a process you'll probably go through repeatedly before you feel comfortable with ...

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