Locating information in the Data Model
Rather than present long lists of entity items, entities are presented in a hierarchy or taxonomy. Each entity is classified according to one or more levels of class. The classes serve to group entities based upon like characteristics or function. This is similar to the Library of Congress or the Dewey Decimal system in which books are organized by subject. If you know a little about the characteristics of the book you are looking for, even if you do not know its name, you have a good chance of easily finding the book.
However, grouping based upon similar characteristics do not always place things that have a strong relation to each other in close proximity. For example a book about Abraham Lincoln’s presidential policy successes and failures might be in a political science section while a book about the civil war would be in the history section even though they are very closely related when one wants to know more about the context within which Lincoln made his most important decisions.
Similarly, an education entity such as lesson, or lesson plan might not be located near a teacher in the taxonomy. Though the design of lesson plans and the delivery by teachers of lessons to students are important process scenarios that show a strong relation among the lesson, lesson plan, teacher, and student entities, this relationship is not reflected in the taxonomy. The Data Model does have a mechanism that allows important relationships among entities to be contained within the Data Model. The Relationships section of each Entity page shows the important relationships of each entity to other entities.
How to Comment on the Data Model
This website serves as the Data Model development website. This is in addition to providing an alternative view to the Data Model from the official website. This site is used for collecting community input on the data model and will have Data Model tools that are under development and not yet available on the official website.
The Data Model Browser section of this website allows specific comments and suggestions to be entered for each page in the Data Model Browser. The Data Model version of this parallel site is a working version of the Data Model that is under development for the next official version of the Data Model data.