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

Silverston c02.tex V2 - 11/21/2008 2:58am Page 35

CHAPTER

2

Setting Up Roles: What

Parties Do

Enterprises increasingly wish to view their business from an enterprise-wide

perspective. One very important way to help with this goal is to understand

the relationships that enterprises have with the people and organizations with

which they do business.

A person or an organization may play any number of roles, such as a

customer, supplier, worker, employee, contractor, or partner. Enterprises track

this personal and organizational information in many different applications

across the whole of their businesses. Different applications view the person or

organization as a customer, partner, or supplier depending how the person

or organization is involved in the business life cycle. Capturing roles within

the context of discrete transactions or business processes is very important. For

example, how is a person involved in a sales transaction — as the customer,

as the salesperson? But, what about the roles that are not declared within

these limited bounds? What are the roles that can be declared for a person

or organization independent of any specific event, transaction, or business

process? What are the roles a person or organization plays within terms of the

enterprise as a whole?

For example, we declare a party (person or organization) to be playing the

role of ‘‘customer.’’ This is one of the ways the enterprise ...