Following The Golden Path The Golden Path is the top-down sequence of data modeling activities that assumes that, at the conclusion of each activity, no issues that would necessitate the resumption of a prior activity are encountered; the scope was set correctly, the concept definitions were apt and sufficient, all needed data requirements were captured up front to the satisfaction of the business, the logical data design covered all the data requirements, and little more, the translation into a physical design went smoothly, and the implementation was done without any major glitches, incorporating optimal performance tweaks, ending exactly as everybody concerned would wish for.
This is the “nothing went wrong” path. A path to strive for, but very difficult to achieve because of Murphy.