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

Silverston c02.tex V2 - 11/21/2008 2:58am Page 38

38 Chapter 2 ■ Setting Up Roles: What Parties Do

There may or may not be any transactions or other business information

associated with that party, but the declarative role is not concerned with this.

The declarative role states that the person or organization may have one or

more declared roles within the context of the enterprise, not what they are doing

within a specific business process or event. This is an important distinction.

Why is this distinction important? Consider this situation: when asked the

question ‘‘who is this person’’ (what information do you have available on

this person), how does an enterprise respond? The first person operating the

web site may say, ‘‘It’s easy! This person is the guy that visits our web site

late in the evenings.’’ The second person operating the accounting system may

say, ‘‘This is a person responsible for paying bills.’’ The third person operating

the human resources system may say, ‘‘This person is our employee.’’ The

fourth person operating the customer relationship management system may

say, ‘‘What? This is one of our customers that we service!’’ If you were able to

see a complete profile for people, you would certainly know more about them

and be able to service them better.

NOTE

Some data modelers may say that you need the context in order to state a

declarative role. For example, you only know if someone ...