A more specific example is the idea of sitting down and listing all the attributes that define a customer profile (name, addresses, date of birth, etc) and then

A more specific example is the idea of sitting down and listing all the attributes that define a customer profile (name, addresses, date of birth, etc) and then designing the CRUD around those things. Contrast this to starting with what are the interactions that a customer actually needs to worry about (send me this product to the address in my PayPal* account) *or whatever external system. If you had to make a guess at how many different pieces of information you have about you in databases for services worldwide (and how many of those are inaccurate, or unnecessary to provide the service), that number would be fairly ridiculous for most people (OOM thousands or tens of thousands). Taking the address idea - no e-commerce site really needs to store this as a profile item. It needs to be in my browser so I can autocomplete for any shipping form. The second point I’m making is the same as your last. “How it gets transformed” is often more important to start with than how it is at rest. (I acknowledge in advance this is a weak argument btw).