I think that entity-relation diagrams are underused, especially when analysing requirements with stake holders. Unfortunately a lot of otherwise capable people

I think that entity-relation diagrams are underused, especially when analysing requirements with stake holders. Unfortunately a lot of otherwise capable people that could benefit from some simple structuring of things and their relations have never thought about the world in that way and may take a little while to catch up. In some cases I have found it to be easier to represent one-to-many relations as a bunch of stacked boxes on the "many" side. But that only works once... Sequence diagrams and state-charts helps from time to time, but does not really help much when talking to non-professionals. But I don't really like the very formal UML. Some bubbles, arrows and crow's feet will do fine in most cases. The precision promised by UML is really a lie, as most diagrams are simplifications and can probably not represent the actual complexity in anything that warrants the use of UML... Anyway, I think it might actually be a good idea to do some simple entity-relationship analysis in schools at some point, if not to just get another tool for sorting out the mess. The underlying reason that led to OO-languages still exists, namely that a lot of things can be described rather nicely with entity-relation maps. It's just unfortunate that the "relation" part was forgotten, and all energy was spent on wrestling various languages into bizarre "OO" hacks such as C++.