How Galen College Uses Modeling as a Competitive Advantage
Data stacks
Features used
About the company
Headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, Galen College of Nursing is one of the leading institutions for nursing education and certification programs. With campuses spanning across the United States in places like Houston, Cincinnati, and Richmond, Galen's data team is tasked with managing and optimizing troves of data. In August of 2022, Galen College purchased SqlDBM to begin their relational modeling journey.
How did SqlDBM help?
- Understand the organization's current database environment
- Establish a modeling framework from design to implementation
- Share models with internal consumers and contributors with little overhead
Establishing a modeling practice
When Galen College onboarded SqlDBM, they were able to quickly extract value from the product. Previously, their data team did not officially use any relational database modeling software, resulting in database architecture ambiguity and technical debt. For Jacob DeMoor, the team's Data Warehouse Lead, it was paramount that his team at least start to adopt modeling. He views the database model as a "architecture map of a given system".
His demands of the software were simple: it should be technical enough that it grasps the full level of detail required, it should offer features that accelerate the speed of engineering work, and it should allow for the model to be easily shared with collaborators and consumers. SqlDBM met all three criteria.
The onboarding was swift, as Jacob was able to quickly reverse engineer one of the college's key student information databases. At that point, he gained a full view of the current schema and quickly started optimizing it. The tool then let Jacob go one step further by facilitating the schema deployment process via forward engineering.
Sharing is caring
The best way for a model to add the most value is top share it and apply it. The tool's sharing features allow Jacob's teammates to do just that. Sharing the schema was faster than ever thanks to SqlDBM's SAAS capabilities. As Jacob describes: "I no longer need to integrate with the IT department to get software installed on other people's workstations, I can just send them the link and add them".
Mapping it out
While Jacob has thoroughly enjoyed SqlDBM thus far, he's actively looking for new capabilities that he can leverage. The newer capabilities that piqued his interest include our automation capabilities via our API, our data governance suite, and view lineage. As the team's modeling practice evolves, they're looking to get into wider observability initiatives, like cataloging and governance. The tricky part is making sure that documentation lives in the same place, or at least communicates with, the model. And with SqlDBM, you can do just that. As Jacob best summarizes, "the model serves as a business blueprint that new data stakeholders can use and reference going forward."