Modeling simplifies database design and maintenance by enabling you, the data architect, to visualize requirements and resolve design issues. Model-driven database design is an efficient methodology for creating valid and well-performing databases, while providing the flexibility to respond to evolving data requirements. Models are used to build EER diagrams and physical MySQL databases.

MySQL Workbench provides extensive capabilities for creating and manipulating database models, including these:

This is not an exhaustive list. The following sections describe these and additional data-modeling capabilities.