Explore KSACs by Pathway
In late 2025, the Partnership pulled together members of industry from across tech to share how the in-demand skillsets for entry-level roles in their fields have changed in the last two years. The Knowledge, Skills & Abilities and Credentials (KSACs) below reflect their feedback on entry-level expectations, especially in a tech workplace increasingly shaped by AI.
5. Data Modeling and Design
| Label | KSAC Description | Bloom's Taxonomy Level | |
|---|---|---|---|
| a | Describe the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and differentiate the waterfall vs agile approaches. | knowledge | 3 |
| b | Explain data modeling and identify the various types of data models (including relational, object-oriented and NoSQL). | knowledge | 2 |
| c | Understand the significance of business requirements and be able to elicit and document those requirements. | skill | 2 |
| d | Understand the importance of business rules and how they affect different components of the data model | knowledge | 3 |
| e | Explain basic data modeling components including entities, attributes, attribute domains, identifiers, relationships and cardinality. | knowledge | 3 |
| f | Describe and differentiate conceptual, logical and physical data model. | knowledge | 3 |
| g | Awareness of the various ER diagramming techniques (such as Chen, Crow's Foot, UML class, Object-role, etc.). | knowledge | 2 |
| h | Identify appropriate technique and create an ER diagram (ERD) to graphically represent a data model. | ability | 3 |
| i | Evaluate and apply appropriate data structures and data types. | ability | 4 |
| j | Ability to normalize a database through 3rd normal form. | ability | 3 |
| k | Describe normalization and denormalization and its associated benefits and risks. | knowledge | 2 |
| l | Demonstrate ability to implement primary and foreign keys and indexes. | ability | 3 |
| m | Recognize the capabilities of data modeling (software) tools. | knowledge | 2 |
| n | Demonstrate ability to use basic SQL data definition language such as Create Table/Index, Alter Table/Index, Drop Table/Index. | ability | 4 |
| o | Understand performance requirements for the database. | knowledge | 2 |
Credentials
Vendor Certifications - DBMS
- Oracle Associate
- Microsoft
- IBM
Vendor Certifications - Cloud
- AWS
- Oracle
- Microsoft