Analyzing Data › Defining Entity Types, Relationships, and Attributes

Defining Entity Types, Relationships, and Attributes

Entity types and their relationships are defined first. They are depicted graphically as an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) and described in supporting documentation. Most diagrams that are used to build business models deal with entity types, not occurrences; but sometimes it is useful to discuss entity occurrences to illustrate a real world example.

Later in analysis, full definitions of all their properties, and of all their attributes, are produced. This detailed definition is done only for those entity types that support the planned business systems.