Common Data Model
Microsoft's standard schema for business entities, used as the starter data model for Dataverse and Dynamics 365.
The Common Data Model (CDM) is Microsoft's open, standardised schema for business entities such as Account, Contact, Product, Order, Invoice, and Employee. It defines tables, relationships, and semantic types that apps can share so data flows between them without bespoke mapping. Dataverse uses the CDM as its starter schema, which is why Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, and Power Apps can interoperate out of the box. CDM definitions are open and published on GitHub, and are also used in Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Lake, and a number of third-party data tools.