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

Silverston c01.tex V2 - 11/21/2008 2:57am Page 18

18 Chapter 1 ■ Introduction

initiated by an event (such as a customer ordering products, a customer

complaining, and so on). They often have detailed items (for example, an

ORDER ITEM, a SHIPMENT ITEM, an INVOICE ITEM, and so on). They

are often related to each other (for example, ORDER ITEM(s) are related

to SHIPMENT ITEM(s) in much the same way that SHIPMENT ITEM(s)

are related to INVOICE ITEM(s)). Finally, transactions and events often

have similar types of roles, statuses, classifications, recursive relation-

ships, and business rules.

Authorizations: This is a common pattern that can address alternative

ways to model what permissions are needed to access various types

of data, what can be shared, and who has access to what types of data.

For example, who is allowed to access what data when logging into a

web site, taking cash out of an ATM, using a PIN over the telephone, or

under other circumstances where there is a need to provide authoriza-

tions and/or permissions to create, access, update, or delete data.

Conventions and Standards Used in This Book

The following section describes the naming standards and diagramming con-

ventions used for presenting the models within this book. The data modeling

notation that we use in this book is a slightly modified version of the notation

advocated by Richard Barker in his book Case*Method: Entity Relationship ...