New Book Review: "The Data Model Resource Book Volume 2 (Revised Edition)"

New book review for The Data Model Resource Book Volume 2 (Revised Edition): A Library of Universal Data Models by Industry Types, by Len Silverston, John Wiley & Sons Inc, 2001:

Although there are quite a few positive reviews for this series of three texts by Silverston, there are also a nontrivial number of dissenters as well, who cite use of Barker's notation rather than Crow's Foot notation (i.e. Information Engineering notation) as well as unexpected contents within the accompanying CD. When first introduced to Richard Barker's "Entity Relationship Modeling" text during graduate school, this reviewer does admit that becoming familiar with his notation did take some time to become familiar with it, but all told it does not deviate significantly from Crow's Foot, and after a short amount of time the reader will actually notice some advantages in using it, one of which is the reduced space that substantive models need to consume. Sure, additional information not available with the CD can be purchased on Silverston's companion web site at Wiley, but it really is not necessary. Not only are these downloads not necessary, these may detract from the process of understanding the material that Silverston is attempting to present. And Silverston presents very well.