Explore KSACs by Pathway
Explore Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Credentials (KSACs) by IT 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 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