Data & Databases · Level 1
The structure
Mission briefing
Mission 6-A: You designed a slick new "team workspace" feature. Engineering's first question isn't about the visuals — it's "what's the data model?" You nod like you understand. You're about to actually understand.
Everything your feature shows has to be stored somewhere — that's the database. It's the organized warehouse where all the app's information lives: users, workspaces, settings, everything. Your screens are windows into it.
Inside the database, data is organized into tables — think spreadsheets, one per type of thing. A users table, a workspaces table. Each table holds many rows, and each row is one record: one user, one workspace.
The schema is the blueprint — what tables exist, what fields (columns) each one has, and how they connect. A field is a single piece of info: a user's email, a workspace's name. When we ask "what's the data model," we're asking you to help define this blueprint.
So my "workspace" needs a table, with fields: name, owner, members, created date. I'm basically designing a structured form that maps to columns. This is just information architecture wearing a database costume.
Engineering asks for the "data model" behind your new feature. What are they asking for?