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

Silverston c09.tex V2 - 11/21/2008 3:16am Page 472

472 Chapter 9 ■ Using the Patterns

Customer hierarchies and organizational structures — that is, who are

the parent companies of their customers and who are their subsidiaries

and divisions?

The different roles that the parties play in general, for example, cus-

tomer, salesperson, and partner.

The different specific roles that a customer plays within the context of

important transactions, such as being the bill-to or ship-to customer for

orders.

The different classifications of customer, such as customer type, cus-

tomer size, industry type, and so on.

With this in mind let us begin by examining the first part of our scenario:

Prototype models, Scope statements.

Prototype Models, Scope Statements

As we have discussed throughout this book, each of the patterns in this book

can have a different level of generalization. You can mix different levels of

generalization in data models to achieve your specific needs. Thus, we suggest

using the appropriate patterns that are suitable for the type of effort and

circumstances involved.

In this section, we describe how to use the different patterns to help illustrate

scope and to show concepts, business data needs, and data issues. We then

show how the patterns may be used to create a simple data model used for a

prototype. The patterns described in this section can also be used as a starting

point to establish a