Data modeling in software engineering is the process of creating a data model by applying formal data model descriptions using data modeling techniques.

Data modeling is a technique for defining business requirements for a database. It is sometimes called database modeling because a data model is eventually implemented in a database.

In the context of Business Process Integration, see figure, data modeling will result in database generation.

It complements business process modeling, which results in application programs to support the business processes.

The actual database design is the process of producing a detailed data model of a database.

This logical data model contains all the needed logical and physical design choices and physical storage parameters needed to generate a design in a Data Definition Language, which can then be used to create a database.

A fully attributed data model contains detailed attributes for each entity. The term database design can be used to describe many different parts of the design of an overall database system.

Principally, and most correctly, it can be thought of as the logical design of the base data structures used to store the data. In the relational model these are the tables and views.

In an Object database the entities and relationships map directly to object classes and named relationships.

However, the term database design could also be used to apply to the overall process of designing, not just the base data structures, but also the forms and queries used as part of the overall database application within the Database Management System or DBMS.


There are several notations for data modeling. The actual model is frequently called "Entity relationship model", because it depicts data in terms of the entities and relationships described in the data.

An entity-relationship model (ERM) is an abstract conceptual representation of structured data. Entity-relationship modeling is a relational schema database modeling method, used in software engineering to produce a type of conceptual data model (or semantic data model) of a system, often a relational database, and its requirements in a top-down fashion.

These models are being used in the first stage of information system design during the requirements analysis to describe information needs or the type of information that is to be stored in a database.

The data modeling technique can be used to describe any ontology (i.e. an overview and classifications of used terms and their relationships) for a certain universe of discourse i.e. area of interest.