Concept Modeling vs. Conceptual Data Modeling

George McGeachie posts (LinkedIn, 2020 April 22)
To Fabian Pascal: Broadly speaking, I agree with your three levels [conceptual, logical, physical], but please don't assume that my view of 'data modelling' is limited to logical database design. "Conceptual" modelling is better described as "Concept" modeling (see the works of Alec Sharp and Ronald Ross), so people don't mentally tag the word 'data' on the end (Conceptual Data Modelling). Where do we stop modelling 'Concepts' and start modelling 'Data'? It's probably somewhere in the top level of representation, before Logical Database Design.

To which Everest responds:

Thanks, George. I like that. I never did like the phrase "data" modeling because. at the heart of it we are not modeling data, we are modeling "things" in the user domain. Now I can say we are modeling "concepts" in the user domain. Modeling "things" suggests only nouns, whereas modeling "concepts" can include constraints, "business" rules, modifiers, roles, subsets, etc. Thus, concept modeling can be very rigorous, richer, and detailed (as in ORM). But we can recognize that this is a prelude to modeling "data" as it would ultimately be manifest in a "logical" data model. Perhaps that helps me better understand what Fabian keeps saying when distinguishing "conceptual" from "logical" data modeling... and his "logical" is (his version of) relational/RDM which is already a step toward implementation (I would argue) simply because it is clustering "attributes" into (1NF) relations.