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Data Models

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17 views3 pages

Data Models

Uploaded by

tahi66438
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Data Models

Data Model is the modeling of the data description, data semantics,


and consistency constraints of the data. It provides the conceptual tools
for describing the design of a database at each level of data abstraction.
Therefore, there are following four data models used for understanding
the structure of the database:

Relational Data Model: This type of model designs the data in the form
of rows and columns within a table. Thus, a relational model uses tables
for representing data and in-between relationships. Tables are also
called relations. This model was initially described by Edgar F. Codd, in
1969. The relational data model is the widely used model which is
primarily used by commercial data processing applications.
Entity-Relationship Data Model: An ER model is the logical
representation of data as objects and relationships among them. These
objects are known as entities, and relationship is an association among
these entities. This model was designed by Peter Chen and published in
1976 papers. It was widely used in database designing. A set of
attributes describe the entities. For example, student_name,
student_id describes the 'student' entity. A set of the same type of
entities is known as an 'Entity set', and the set of the same type of
relationships is known as 'relationship set'.
Object-based Data Model: An extension of the ER model with notions
of functions, encapsulation, and object identity, as well. This model
supports a rich type system that includes structured and collection
types. Thus, in 1980s, various database systems following the object-
oriented approach were developed. Here, the objects are nothing but
the data carrying its properties.

Semistructured Data Model: This type of data model is different from


the other three data models (explained above). The semistructured
data model allows the data specifications at places where the individual
data items of the same type may have different attributes sets. The
Extensible Markup Language, also known as XML, is widely used for
representing the semistructured data. Although XML was initially
designed for including the markup information to the text document, it
gains importance because of its application in the exchange of data.

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