Data structures and meaning
Conceptual business ER diagram
Entities and the relationships between them at business level: names and cardinalities, no storage design.
ddn@1New DDN source
Why use it?
Agree on the things the business tracks before any schema discussion; the diagram is the vocabulary contract.
When it helps
Early domain workshops and any review where business stakeholders must confirm scope without reading SQL.
How to read it
- Entities are nouns; relationships are verbs with cardinality marks.
- Participation marks (zero/one/many) are claims about the domain, not constraints enforced here.
What you need
- The entities the business names
- How they relate, in business words
- Rough cardinalities
Things to check
- Do not start assigning datatypes here — that is the logical/physical stage.
- A relationship without a business-readable verb is usually a missing entity.
Scope of this diagram
Conceptual only: no keys, types or indexes are decided by this view.
Work with the converted example
- Open the viewer and select
diagram. Inspect the rendered view and its source. - Open the designer. Keep the selected profile and inspect its legal palette and property controls.
- Change one displayed title or an appropriate data value. Apply the edit and check the resulting diagram.
- Run the verifier and review its diagnostics before moving complete content into review.
- Download your edited DDN source to retain the change.
The example uses the indentation-based ddn-next-1 dialect. The language guide explains reusable definitions, dotted data rows and explicit property blocks.