Association and Associative entity

The Business Data Model (BDM) uses two constructs to model the relationships between fundamental entities in the model: direct associations and associative entities. When an association is between two fundamental entities, has no descriptive data on it and has one nature to the association, then a direct association is used. When an association is between more than two fundamental entities, contains data or can have several contexts (relationship types) then an associative entity is used. A direct association is the more common construct used in the Business Data Model.

Note: direct associations can be made from a fundamental entity at any level of a type hierarchy to another fundamental entity at any level of a type hierarchy. The associations thus described are explicit and descriptive of the specific business context of the relationship between two fundamental entities.

Properties

Here is the list of properties defined for each association:

Name (mandatory)
A textual name that identifies this association in title case (all words start with a capital letter). This name is based on the name of the entities from which the association originates.
  • e.g. Location Primary Address
Inverse Verb Phrase
A short textual name indicating the nature of the association between two fundamental entities.
  • e.g. is location primary address
Type (required)

Association options:

  • Identifying
  • Non-identifying
  • Mandatory
  • Optional
  • Cardinality

Here is the list of properties defined for each associative entity:

Name (mandatory)
A textual name that identifies this associative entity in title case (all words start with a capital letter). This name is based on the name of the business term that this entity originates from.
  • e.g. Supported System Resource
Owning package (mandatory)
The owning package to which this associative entity belongs.
  • e.g. package System owns associative entity Supported System Resource
Description (mandatory)
A complete and unambiguous description of this associative entity. This description can be based on the description of the business term that this associative entity originates from. Examples can be included in the description.
Persistent (mandatory)
A flag that indicates whether the entity is persistent or not. All BDM entities are set to non-persistent, as BDM is not intended to be transformed to a physical data model.
Note: when the persistent flag is enabled, the entity is included in the scope of the practitioner, project, or enterprise data model. When harvesting the data model, special care must be taken in connection with the persistent flag. For example, project A can decide to include an entity, but project B can decide not to include it. When harvesting project A at the enterprise level, the entity is set to persistent, indicating that the entity is part of the enterprise data model. Afterward, when harvesting project B at the enterprise level, care must be taken to keep the entity as persistent, although project B does not include it.
Attributes (optional)
The attributes that describe this associative entity.
  • e.g. attribute Vertical Support Height describes associative entity Supported System Resource
Child relationships (mandatory)

An associative entity has at least two relationships defined for each entity involved in the association. The associative entity is always the child side of the relationships. These relationships show how two or more fundamental entities relate.

  • e.g. associative entity Supported System Resource has a child relationship to fundamental entity System Resource
Assigned terms (mandatory)
The business terms, usually primary terms, that are the origin of the definition of this associative entity. A business term can be the source of one or more associative entities, depending on its definition. The assigned terms maintain traceability between the Business Data Model elements and the business terms. Therefore, the mapping should be as precise as possible and indicate all the fundamental entities and associative entities at the most specific level. When a business term is assigned to an associative entity, the business terms should also be assigned to the specific parents of the associative entity when they are different from the more generic parents defined in the Business Data Model.
  • e.g. business term Supported System Resource is assigned to associative entity Supported System Resource