Database Reference
In-Depth Information
During the process of modeling a recipe management system for a large manufacturing
company, I was amazed to witness team members with years of experience debate whether
the concept of an
Ingredient
differed from the concept of
Raw Material
after asking the
question, “What is the difference between an
Ingredient
and a
Raw Material
?” After a
30-minute discussion on ingredients and raw materials, everyone who participated in this
modeling effort benefited from the debate and left the modeling session with a stronger
understanding of recipe management. We documented the results on the data model and
moved on to asking more questions, continuing this iterative data requirements process.
E
MBARKING ON
O
UR
P
UBLISHING
A
DVENTURE
I am not only the author of this topic, but I also manage the publishing company that pub-
lished it. So in addition to being a data modeler, I am also the CEO of a large publishing
empire called
Technics Publications, LLC
. “Empire” might be a slight exaggeration, as
I am also the only employee. Being a one-person company has a very large advantage,
however, in that I know the publishing business inside and out. I can describe every step
necessary to produce a topic. Publishing is a great example to use in this topic because I
can be your business expert, and together, we will perform the data modeling from idea
through MongoDB design.
In fact, let's build our first publishing data model right now! However, instead of the typical
boxes and lines we associate with a data model, let's start with a data model in the form of a
spreadsheet. Data models come in many forms, and perhaps the most common form of data
