What is the difference between logical data model and conceptual data model?

Question

What is the difference between logical data model and conceptual data model?

Answer 1

This is an old question and maybe this comes way too late, but I don't see one very important aspect necessary to answering the question. That is, the TARGET audience for the data model. The Conceptual Data Model is the model generated from business analysis, from interviews with the BUSINESS about their data. It is not so much "high level" as it is the business's understanding of their data, business rules captured in the relationships between "candidate" entities. At this point, you are capturing the things of importance to the business (Employee, Customer, Contract, Account, etc.) and the relationships between them. The final Conceptual Data Model may be somewhat abstract -- for instance, treating Individuals and Organizations entering into a contract as subtypes of a "Party", Contractors and Permanent Employees as subtypes of an Employee, even Employees and Customers subtypes of "Person" -- but it is a document that a data modeler develops from discussions with the business SMEs and presents to the business for validation.

The Logical Data Model is not just "more detail" -- where useful and important, a Conceptual Data Model may well have attributes included -- it is the ARCHITECTURE document, the model that is presented to the software analysts/engineers to explain and specify the data requirements. It will resolve many-to-many relationships to association tables and will define all attributes, with examples and constraints, so that code can be written against the architecture.

The Physical model is that Logical Model generated specifically for a particular environment, such as SQL Server or Teradata or Oracle or whatever. It will have keys, indexes, partitions, or whatever is needed to implement, based on sizing, access frequency, security constraints, etc.

So, if you are being asked to develop a Conceptual Data Model, you are being asked to design the solution (or part of it) from scratch, getting your information from the business. There's more to it, but I hope that answers the question.