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

Silverston c06.tex V2 - 11/21/2008 3:09am Page 238

238 Chapter 6 ■ Status: The States of Data

changes as different events happen. At different relative times in all of the

processes, various entities may have one or more status. These statuses indicate

some business standing or condition, such as ‘‘Entered,’’ ‘‘Cancelled,’’ and so

on. Having a clear strategy for managing statuses is crucial for any e nterprise.

How else would it know what was happening inside its business?

A very common problem for data professionals when interviewing subject

matter experts is the difficulty in unraveling and understanding the various

statuses as various transactions or events occur. For example, operations staff

may say that their job is to close ‘‘Open orders.’’ To operations people orders

may be either ‘‘Open orders’’ or ‘‘Closed orders.’’ They see only one small

part of the life cycle. So, the orders are always open when they do their

work, and when they are finished, the orders become closed and are someone

else’s problem. The finance department may consider an order to be paid,

or unpaid. In other words, an order only has two statuses of interest to the

finance department, ‘‘Paid’’ or ‘‘Unpaid.’’ To a data professional, the order

may be in all of the statuses we have mentioned, plus many more statuses, as

it goes through a complete order fulfillment life cycle.

On data modeling e ngagements, when we have reviewed ...