Ellie 8.4: Relationship Editor – Getting Ready for Reusable Relationships
Ellie 8.4 ships a rebuilt Relationship Editor with named relationships, flexible labels, and quick cardinality edits — laying the groundwork for reusable relationships.
Blog
Thinking on semantic data modeling and the universal semantic layer, plus release notes on what's new in Ellie.
How to Build an Enterprise Model Through Domains
A domain-driven approach to enterprise data modeling: decompose the enterprise model into bounded business domains, assign ownership, and integrate them into one aligned structure.
Decades of Data Design: A History of Conceptual Modeling
A history of conceptual data modeling from Codd's relational model and Chen's ER model through DDD, data mesh, and today's collaborative tools like Ellie.ai.
Top Skills for Enterprise Data Modelers—and How to Build Them
A rundown of the skills enterprise data modelers need - business domain knowledge, conceptual and logical modeling, facilitation, metadata and glossary management, governance understanding, change management, and stakeholder alignment among them - with concrete ways to build each one.
Ellie 8.2 Release: More Powerful, Customizable, and Unified Data Modeling
Ellie 8.2 brings entity types to logical and physical models, color-coded schema types, and customizable glossary entity settings, unifying modeling across all three levels.
Why Is Enterprise Data Modeling So Hard?
Ten reasons enterprise data modeling efforts fall short, from misalignment between business and data teams and inconsistent definitions to siloed tools, overengineering, and unclear ownership, plus the ROI case for fixing them and a checklist for when a model needs to be revisited.
Why Is It a Stairway to Analytics Heaven—and a Highway to Data Hell?
Contrasts two paths to becoming data driven: the slower “stairway,” built on glossary workshops, conceptual modeling, and catalog-linked definitions, against the fast “highway” of hard-coded metrics and duplicated logic, with a six-question checklist for diagnosing which one a team is actually on.
How 3 Laws of Data Modeling Change the Way You Think About Data Products
Three laws reframe data modeling as product design, communication, and iteration — a mindset shift that produces models teams actually trust and use.
Ellie 8.1: Meet the New Modeling Canvas
Ellie 8.1 brings a cleaner, more spacious Modeling Canvas with smarter bottom toolbars, a simplified spotlight-style search, and an optional left sidebar for a smoother modeling experience.
3 Best Ways to Organize Your Business Glossary and Terms
Three ways to structure a business glossary so it stays useful: organize by business domain, keep it collaborative and living, and connect it to real workflows and models.
Ellie 8.0 - Reusable Logical Entities in Glossary
Ellie 8.0 brings reusable logical entities to the glossary: define a logical entity once and reuse it consistently across every model that needs it.
3 Ways to Get Business Invested in Data Outcomes
Business teams stay disconnected from data until they help shape it. Three ways to build shared ownership of outcomes: conceptual modeling, glossaries, and collaborative workflows.
Ready to See It in Action?
A 45-minute call with a data modeling expert, not a sales pitch.