Book excerpt: The purpose of this book is to provide a practical approach for IT professionals to acquire the necessary knowledge and expertise in data modeling to function effectively. It begins with an overview of basic data modeling concepts, introduces the methods and techniques, provides a comprehensive case study to present the details of the data model components, covers the implementation of the data model with emphasis on quality components, and concludes with a presentation of a realistic approach to data modeling. It clearly describes how a generic data model is created to represent truly the enterprise information requirements.