Data models

Data models are enterprise-wide business and design data models used to build and accelerate the development of reporting solutions, such as business intelligence (BI) and standardized reporting. They are mapped back to the vocabulary and act as a bridge between the business terminology and the deployed IT assets. The data models are delivered and customized as logical data models by using entity-relationship (ER) representation.

Figure 1. Data model components and their relationships

Scoping

A scope is used to identify a subset of data model elements of a particular project or a particular business area. Such scopes are defined by using diagrams within the <<Scopes>> package¹ in the data models. During the customization of a particular data model, you define your own project scopes. There are no predefined scopes in the delivered data models.

Ownership

The data model components are owned by the IT department.

Atomic Warehouse Model
The Atomic Warehouse Model (AWM) is a design-level data model that represents the enterprise-wide repository of atomic data used for information processing. This includes the historic changes to business information over time, and of which the business wants to track for analytical purposes. In addition to the business content, AWM includes technical constructs, such as primary and foreign keys, history entities and data warehouse population information. AWM is highly normalized, although it can contain duplication and derivation for ease of navigation and performance.
Dimensional Warehouse Model
The Dimensional Warehouse Model (DWM) is the enterprise-wide repository for analytical data. It contains star-schema-style dimensional data structures that are organized around fact entities that support the analytical requirements. DWM can be accessed by directly using analytical tools or queries, or its content can be easily distributed to specific downstream data marts. DWM content is derived from the atomic data that is represented in the Atomic Warehouse Model (AWM) in addition to the denormalized representation of data in the Requirements Model. It also includes entities for efficiency of storage and analysis, such as mini-dimension entities. DWM is delivered and customized as a logical data model.

Parent topic: Industry Model components

¹ If the <<Scopes>> package does not already exist, you must create it as indicated in the data models customization tasks.