The Data Model Resource Book, Volume 3: Universal Patterns for Data Modeling

Silverston c07.tex V2 - 11/20/2008 5:44pm Page 308

308 Chapter 7 ■ Contact Mechanisms: How to Get in Touch

the preliminary patterns f or two reasons. First, we believe, going forward, that the

location of a contact mechanism is less relevant in the new mobile world. Fewer

and fewer people have ‘home phones,’ ‘office phones,’ and ‘car phones.’ Second,

we think that ‘‘Don’t call your clients at home!’’ may mean ‘‘Don’t call your clients

‘personal’ phone number for ‘business’ reasons.’’ We take care of this by capturing

the usage of a contact mechanism, and the usage may indicate ‘personal’ use or

‘business’ use. Nonetheless, if there is a need to capture the location of the contact

mechanism, this is accommodated in the Level 3 and Level 4 Patterns by providing

the flexibility to have as many classifications of a contact mechanism as is needed.

Level 1 Contact Mechanism Pattern

A common approach for data models (and data modelers) is to model the spe-

cific contact mechanism needs for an enterprise in order to better understand

these requirements. This type of approach should show all of the different

types of contact mechanisms for an entity, as well as the different classifications

of the contact mechanism, such as the purposes, usages, and/or priority of the

contact mechanisms. One option for accommodating this need is to create a

very specific data model of contact mechanisms, and you can use the