Data Models 101

The aim of this book is to explain how individual items of information e.g names of individuals or organisations can be linked to other items of information for whatever purpose the user may have in mind. To illustrate how databases may be constructed and populated, the staging of football (soccer) competitions, a world-wide phenomenon and explicable to most adults, will be used here to illustrate how the different types of entities e.g. games, goals, venues and teams required to stage and document competitions are related. The data models, diagrams showing the associations between the different types of entities, should explain to non-database specialists what data is being collected and how it may be used.You should be able to create and manage your own databases if the techniques I have discussed make sense to you. Good luck.