Who Creates Data Models?
And Why? From my research I’ve found three reasons to develop data models: A GIS user (individual or group) develops a model to meet its organization’s needs. A vendor might develop a model and make it available to its customers to help “jumpstart” their implementations. Industry organizations and government agencies craft models with the idea that they will simplify data sharing. There may be some mixed motives across those groups, so those statements may be somewhat oversimplified. ESRI and Data Models I spoke with Steve Grise, ESRI Product Manager for Data Models. One of the things he illustrated when I asked about how standards play into data models was that most data models are built on standards. He pointed to the existing Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) Cadastral Data Content Standard, which details what information “should be” included in such a GIS layer. That Standard is the basis of the ESRI parcel data model: the ESRI data model basically incorporates all of the de
