Editing Data model (section)

=== Information model ===
{{Main|Information model}}
[[File:A 01 Audio compact disc collection.svg|thumb|320px|Example of an [[EXPRESS (data modeling language)|EXPRESS G]] [[information model]] ]]
An Information model is not a type of data model, but more or less an alternative model. Within the field of software engineering, both a data model and an information model can be abstract, formal representations of entity types that include their properties, relationships and the operations that can be performed on them. The entity types in the model may be kinds of real-world objects, such as devices in a network, or they may themselves be abstract, such as for the entities used in a billing system. Typically, they are used to model a constrained domain that can be described by a closed set of entity types, properties, relationships and operations.

According to Lee (1999)<ref name="Lee99"/> an information model is a representation of concepts, relationships, constraints, rules, and [[Operation (mathematics)|operations]] to specify [[Semantic data model|data semantics]] for a chosen domain of discourse. It can provide sharable, stable, and organized structure of information requirements for the domain context.<ref name="Lee99">Y. Tina Lee (1999). [http://www.mel.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/tina99im.pdf "Information modeling from design to implementation"] National Institute of Standards and Technology.</ref> More in general the term ''information model'' is used for models of individual things, such as facilities, buildings, process plants, etc. In those cases the concept is specialised to [[Facility Information Model]], [[Building information modeling|Building Information Model]], Plant Information Model, etc. Such an information model is an integration of a model of the facility with the data and documents about the facility.

An information model provides formalism to the description of a problem domain without constraining how that description is mapped to an actual implementation in software. There may be many mappings of the information model. Such mappings are called data models, irrespective of whether they are [[object model]]s (e.g. using [[Unified Modeling Language|UML]]), [[entity–relationship model]]s or [[XML schema]]s.

[[File:JKDOM.SVG|thumb|180px|left|[[Document Object Model]], a standard [[object model]] for representing [[HTML]] or [[XML]] ]]