The 30 Plus Skillsets of a Data Modeler

The Major Skillsets of a Data Modeler

The total skillset count is at minimum 36 and may exceed 60 total skillsets combined into one resource to create a data modeler which is far greater than what is now called a "full stack" developer. Data Modeler experience levels usually exceed the knowledge and experience of a PHD, CTO, or CIO. The data modeler enables real-time accurate data for proactive management. Without that, none of the C-level managers or lower can manage a company propertly. They become purely reactive with little to no control of the company.

All of the skill sets are not meant to be used individually, but as a whole to enable the data modeler to visualize, and understand, a complete data system for end-to-end development starting at the data level. The most important skill is the ability to understand and visualize data models directly from business requirements and meetings. All of the skills below are required to enable that primary skill.

Data modelers are not to be used to put on a show with long speeches and 8 hours of meetings, as has become a trend due to most data modelers not actually having the required skills. The data modeler is usually the quietest resource because he or she is constantly collecting requirements by listening for and reading business rules and requirements. When you hear someone with the title data modeler who is constantly talking and stating complex data modeling theory terms, he or she is likely fake. Most of the business unit and client interaction should be conducted by the Sr. business analyst.

Because all modern applications and business processes are data-driven, the most important job in any company is the data modeler. Without a correct set of data models, none of the data can be trusted and most applications will either not work at all, have poor performance, or make critical mistakes that affect business profit or government accountability. For example, a CEO may rely on KPI metrics to make business decisions, but those metrics will always be wrong, late, incomplete due to manual processes, or completely missing or faked if the data modeler was not hired to ensure that the core data structure is actually correct, secure, and reliable with automated data updates from reliable sources. In many ways, the data modeler is more important than a CEO and should be appointed by the board of directors with full autonomy.

Ninety-three percent of all IT projects fail or are canceled due to lack of analysis which is required for data modeling or no data modeler is hired at the start of the project citing either lack of time or the cost of the data modeler is too high. Even after major data breaches costing over $400,000,000, companies still leave the hiring decisions for data modelers to middle management, developers, or even college student interns with zero experience who use birthdays and astrology to make critical business decisions.

This happened in an interview with Capital One in 2018. I was not hired there because of my age and date of birth, and my rates were realistically in the millions of dollars for rebuilding a real-time banking system. The people they did hire, who claimed to be able to do the job for $100,000, hacked the entire bank, and stole millions of identities, costing the bank billions of dollars/year even now. They then tried to scapegoat AWS for the data breach. The Capital One project is now part of the aforementioned 93% IT project failure. It is common for hackers to infiltrate companies using low wages. They simply want to leave backdoors into the data systems so a second team can hack in from the outside. Capital One is still hiring the same people at the same low rates using Astrology. Eventually, that bank may join the over 700 other US banks that have failed due to this absurdity. https://www.capitalone.com/digital/facts2019/

Skills

1. Interpretation and transformation of business requirements, processes, and rules into conceptual, logical, and physical database design using the Ralph Kimball, William Inmon, and Dr. Edgar F. Codd ACID compliant strategies. This skill is a combination of Business Analyst skills, Data Analyst Skills, and DBA skills with a way of thinking and designing systems that is unique to data modelers. (Minimum skill count 5 - (1)UML Data Model Design, (2)Business (3)Collaboration, (4)ETL, (5)SQL, (6)Technical Writing, (7)extreme patience and planning skills)
2. Full Business Analyst skills with the ability to collect and understand business requirements with the skill to collaborate with other Business Analysts. (Minimum skill count 4 - (8)Multicultural Communications skills, (9)Problem Solving, (10)Negotiation, (11)Critical Thinking & (12)Documentation)
3. Data Architecture Design; Full Data Architect skill set is required for data base design because use, growth, and performance must be considered in the database design, which is the physical data model. (Minimum skill count 4 - (13)"Big Picture" Hardware design, (14)cost analysis for hardware purchase, (15)long-term reports on hardware needs based on use and growth, (16)implementation of hardware systems design)
4. Database Administration; Full DBA skill set is required for performance tuning the data model design and recommending performance parameters for the physical database. (Minimum skills count 10 - (17)Communications skills, (18)SQL with knowledge of database theory, (19)database engine design, (20)knowledge of specific database types, (21)knowledge of multiple types of queries, (22)client-server model, (23)operating systems, (24)storage technologies, (25)networking, and (26)maintenance with includes recover, fail-over, clustering, etc.
5. Object Oriented Code programming skills; This is required for generating and editing the base code for and from the physical data model. Data Modelers should be able to generate a complete, working interface to the physical database with separation between application code and interface code. The top language is currently Java, followed by C++. This skill is critical for performance, data integrity, high availability, and scalability. (Minimum skills count 3 - (27)Object Oriented Code Design, UML and Technical writing, (28)writing code, (29)unit testing. )
6. Web Development skills; used for generating and editing interface forms for data entry, and reading from the physical database. (Minimum skills count 3 - (30)HTML, (31)XML, (32)graphics and graphics integration, (33)JavaScript)
7. Data Analytics & Data Science (Minimum 5 skills - (34)Scripting languages such as Python, Matlab, R, Perl, and SAS, (35)statistics & Data Cubes, (36)reporting skills, (37)charts and graphs, (38)desktop tools such as excel and tableau, SQL)
8. Business Intelligence; This can include custom made products, Cognos, Hyperion, etc. (Minimum skill count 3 - (39)BI Tools, SQL, (40)Communications and Presentation of Reports)
9. Multiple Operating Systems; Multiple specialized types of Linux, Solaris UNIX, HPUX UNIX, IBM AIX. (Minimum Major skills count 4, major skills have internal required skills. For example, (41)UNIX administration also requires knowledge of shell scripting, perl, disk tools such as the dd utility, etc. Therefore when one indicates UNIX as a skill, there are usually over a dozen skills within that one skill.)
10. Multiple Databases with solid knowledge for use and administration for the top three enterprise databases which have a (42)query result cache and (43)in-memory database features; (44)Oracle, (45)DB2, (46)PostgreSQL. A Data Modeler must also understand the (47)evolution of databases and be familiar with all forms of databases; file system databases, such as Hadoop and 1970's legacy database systems, tabular databases, which are now commonly known as NoSQL databases such as Excel, Access, and 1970's legacy databases upon which they are based, (48)Columnar databases, which were replaced by relational databases by the 1980's, (49)relational databases, which are the most commonly used type of database, and (50)relational in-memory databases with both columnar and row based indexing, which are the best type of database for real-time reports and business intelligence. (Minimum Major skills 8)
11. QA, Data Governance, and Policy Writing Skills (Minimum skills count 3) Business requirements documentation, technical writing, UML, (51)policy writing, (52)policy enforcement, (53)compliance testing, Metadata.
12. Team management(54), (55)peer review, (56)practical exercise and testing for job screening, (57)staffing profiles, (58)project and (59)portfolio management, (60)electronic document management. (Minimum skills count 7)
13. Application server configuration for clustering, high availability, and scalability (61). This could include Glassfish/iPlanet/SunOne, IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic, Oracle 10g application server, Wildfly / JBoss, etc. (62)Application deployment to a cluster.(Minimum skills count 2)
14. Cyber security and data encryption. (63) AES 256-bit and 512-bit encryption, (64) Automated encryption of data inside databases, (64) Java or C++ cryptography, (65) Cyber security integration with data governance (Minimum skills count 4)

So, what does such a person cost to employ?

Rate from 1993: $500 / hour ($1,000,000 / YEAR)

2020 Contractor C2C (regular small to medium project): $1250/hour (Includes one million dollars for land, facilities, utilities, hardware, and software for project start-up costs alone. Other expenses included labor, legal consultation for industry standard compliance such as accounting lawyers for bank systems, medical lawyers for HIPAA & HEDIS compliance for EHR systems, etc. LARGE projects have had an average of $5,190,000 in just legal costs and legal compliance certification for things like international human trafficking detection for the supply chain. Realistically, there are no more small data projects. They are large by data size and legal complexity combined with business requirement complexity.)

ERP/SCM Contractor C2C (large projects 5000+ tables): $15000+/hour or over $30,000,000/year (includes 1-year use of 7.5 million in enterprise-level hardware for commercial data modeling system)

EHR Development - $15,000+/ hour. (Retail value of a fully functional HIPAA/HEDIS compliant FHIR system is 3.9 BILLION to over 30 BILLION dollars.)

Due to failures in development with data modeling, AFTER launching its first EHR, Dell purchased another company whose data model was corrected by the author of this article for almost 4 BILLION DOLLARS.

https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/dell-buy-perot-systems-almost-4b