Data modelling
Data is central to most administration processes. The structure of this data needs to reflect the priorities of the organisation. We can help your project or service to model your data so that it fits with the wider University Data Model and with services such as the Data Warehouse.
Data modelling identifies the items that are most important to the University community and provides a range of mechanisms for describing them consistently.
Common vocabulary
A goal of Enterprise Architecture is to achieve a common vocabulary across the University. For example, if someone asks how many students are registered with a particular school, the question needs to be refined to clarify which classes of students are included and how part-time students should be counted, among other ambiguities.
We can work together with a service team to identify which items are most important to their service.
Data schemas
The core task of data modelling is to design the:
- key entities
- attributes or fields that describe each entity, and
- relationships between them
This task is usually done by a business analyst or systems analyst. We can support this work by providing information about how these entities, attributes and relationships fit within the University's wider data environment.
The example below is an image of the data model for Estates Maintenance data. The model itself can be browsed in detail on the EA Repository portal.
Our goal is to provide a common view of the University's administrative data, so that reports and dashboards can incorporate data from different sources and link that data together.
We also define and maintain the data models for the Data Warehouse, and can work in partnership with projects and services to bring data into the warehouse.
Data architecture
A data architecture diagram shows:
- the data sets managed by each service
- key relationships between those data sets
- which IT systems they are stored on
This example diagram shows the data managed and used by the Digital Learning and Multimedia section.
University data model
More information about the University's adminstrative data sets, including the University data model and the Data Warehouse, can be found on the University Data section of this website.