COMPARATIVE FRAMEWORK OF DATA MODELLING PARADIGMS AND APPROACHES.

Abstract

Data modeling is viewed as a way of perceiving, organizing and describing data. This shares important issues with the epistemological and ontological questions: how is valid knowledge acquired, and what is the nature of the world to which it refers? The philosophical positions taken on these questions correspond to antithetical paradigms: the realist-positivist and the nominalist-interpretivist. These are combined into a framework through which the various existing data modeling approaches are related. The most common data modeling paradigm, the realist-positivist, is explored in some detail. The result sheds doubt on the efficacy of this paradigm as a basis for data modeling approaches.