You can buy a Data Architecture
If you want to build a data warehouse, you need a Data Architecture Until now, to get even the first draft of an architecture model required hiring a consultant to spend anywhere from three to six months.
Now that’s all changing. What once took consultants months to do, you can now do yourself in a few days. What once cost $60,000, $100,000, or more now costs a fraction of that amount.
Data Model Patterns: Data Architecture in a Box™ is an Oracle® Designer database that includes a first draft data model, fully attributed, documented, and ready to use (after appropriate review and correction by your company's management, of course) as the basis for a database design and systems development.
Data Model Patterns: Data Architecture in a Box™ is based on the Dorset House book, Data Model Patterns: Conventions of Thought, by David C. Hay, and is based on years of strategic and analytical study by Essential Strategies, Inc., across a variety of different industries. (To see a list of the industries, press here.) This experience has yielded a data architecture model fundamental to nearly every kind of commercial and manufacturing business, so there's no need to start from ground zero, hiring a consultant or struggling to build your own models.

So now . . .
  • You can skip the detailed initial interviews.
  • Don't develop an initial model from scratch.
  • Bypass creating modeling session slides to explain the model.
Begin by conducting the first modeling session. The slides you need are already included. The objective of this session is not to create a model, but to modify it, making general concepts specific to your company's situation.



See an example of The Model, with description.

See the industries on which The Model was based.



See the contents of The Model.



Anyone can understand The Model
The Model that is Data Model Patterns: Data Architecture in a Box™ can easily be understood by the people who have to confirm and accept any enterprise data model — the people who run the business. This is achieved in two ways:
First of all, The Model is composed of a series of drawings that allow understanding of it to build up, one step at a time. These can be used to conduct a management review session, right out of the box.
Press here to see samples of the diagrams and explanations.



The second reason Data Model Patterns: Data Architecture in a Box™ is understandable is that it is simple. The Core Model contains just 100 entities — many fewer than seen in most enterprise models. (Each optional section adds a handful of entities to this.)
Think about it: What are the fundamental entities that define an enterprise? PERSON? PRODUCT? There are in fact many fewer things of significance to a business than most of us see as we look around a company. As it happens, most of the entities we think we see are really only examples of the more fundamental ones.
The Core Model's 100 entities handily describe all the people and organizations that concern nearly any commercial or manufacturing company — as well as all the company's products, activities, and contracts. To use more entities would be to clutter The Model unnecessarily.
(The model for financial institutions, such as banks or brokerage houses, is somewhat different from this one, although not as different as you might suppose.)
This simplicity has many benefits. Among them, as just mentioned, is the fact that it makes The Model more understandable — more accessible — to everyone. The entire team can buy off on it and have the same understanding of what it is about.
More significantly, however, systems built from The Model will be more robust. Since The Model's entities have been defined in terms of what is possible, instead of just what was requested this week, those unplanned events that make systems obsolete won't affect systems built from it.





Copernicus' model of the solar system was much simpler than Ptolemy's, but it was vastly more powerful.
Thanks to him, we now understand how the heavens really work.




Using the Model
Data Model Patterns: Data Architecture in a Box™ is an important piece of the system development process. By using this, you are bypassing a significant part of the modeling effort. This is, however, only one part of the overall process required to develop systems. While this set of templates can form the basis for arriving at the true model of your business, as delivered, it is not your company’s model. The product is packaged so as to make arriving at your company’s model as painless as possible, but that step must still be taken.
Only after you have taken that step may you then use the resulting model as the basis for designing your company’s databases - whether they are to constitute a data warehouse, make up an operational data store, or be part of an application.
Data models are important in the design of databases, but they are not, by themselves, database designs. It is always necessary to apply skill in making the various decisions designers must make to produce a practical, functioning database.
In addition, note that this is only a model of data structure. To support the development of effective systems, you also need models of business processes, business rules, and other dimensions of the business as well.




And We can help, too!
Of course, Essential Strategies, Inc. can help you with these other aspects of the system development process.
We can:
  • Help conduct with modeling feedback sessions.
  • Help refine this standard model to meet your needs.
  • Model business processes.
  • Model business rules.
  • Design databases, based on the model.
  • Assist in other aspects of the implementation of a data warehouse.





But what will it cost?
You can buy Data Model Patterns: Data Architecture in a Box™ as an Oracle® Designer database with The Core Model required to describe a company for $9,950.
Additional models describing accounting, document management (including the structure of Material Safety Data Sheets and clinical research Case Report Forms), process manufacturing, and materials planning cost $1,990.00 each.
And if you don't already have it, Essential Strategies, Inc. can also sell you a copy of Oracle® Designer (at a discount).





To Order . . .
To order Data Model Patterns: Architecture in a Box™ or Oracle® Designer , or to find out more about the services of Essential Strategies, Inc.: To buy the book, Data Model Patterns: Conventions of Thought from Dorset House: