Term of the Moment
DHCP
Definition: data model
A description of the organization of a database. It is often created as an entity relationship diagram. Today's modeling tools allow the attributes and tables (fields and records) to be graphically created. The SQL code that defines the data structure (schema) in the database is automatically created from the visual representation. See entity relationship model.
Building an Entity Relationship Model
The Erwin modeling program from Logic Works, Princeton, NJ, stands for Entity Relationship for Windows. In this order processing example, the tables for customers and orders are drawn graphically, and Erwin turns the graph into the appropriate SQL code for the target database. (Example courtesy of Logic Works, Inc.)