Associative entity

A Business Data Model (BDM) associative entity represents an association between two fundamental entities that has a potential many-to-many cardinality or that holds some attributes. It can be concrete, such as the birth place, or it can be more generic, representing commonalities between a number of concrete associative entities, such as the root parents. Associative entities are organized in a two levels hierarchy, the first level identifies the associative entities that have the same root fundamental entity parents. Associative entities originate from the business term definitions and from the relationships between the concepts described in the business term definitions.

When an association between two fundamental entities has no descriptive data on it and has a one-to-many cardinality for ever, a direct relationship is used.

Properties

Name (mandatory)

A textual name that identifies this associative entity in lower case (all words start with a lower case letter). This name is based on the name of the business term that this entity originates from and can be inherited from it when appropriate.

e.g. associative entity object ownership
e.g. associative entity birth place
e.g. associative entity role player - physical object rlship

Owning package (mandatory)

The owning package to which this associative entity belongs. A special package that is named Associatives holds the root associative entities and identifies them and their children as associative entities. The child associative entities can belong to the Associatives package or to a package based on the business category of the business term that this associative entity originates from.

e.g. package Party owns associative entity object ownership
e.g. package Associatives owns associative entity role player - physical object rlship

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 and can be inherited from it when appropriate. Examples can be included in the description. These must be prefixed with e.g. and are delimited by a new line.

Persistent (mandatory)

A flag that indicates whether the entity is persistent or not. All BDM entities are set to 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.

Supertype (optional)

The generalized associative entity that shares its attributes and associations with this entity. This can be the associative entity that originates from the supertype business term that this associative entity originates from.

e.g. associative entity role player - physical object rlship is a supertype of associative entity object ownership

Subtypes (optional)

The associative entities that inherit the attributes and associations of this entity.

e.g. associative entity object management is a subtype of associative entity role player - physical object rlship
e.g. associative entity birth place is a subtype of associative entity role player - place rlship

Attributes (optional)

The attributes that describe this associative entity. These attributes are based on the secondary business terms that are related to the primary business term that this associative entity originates from, and on the description of that primary business term.

e.g. attribute Ownership percentage describes associative entity object ownership

Child relationships (mandatory)

An associative entity has always two and only two relationships defined for each entity involved in the association. These relationships are based on the related primary terms to the business term that this associative entity originates from.

e.g. associative entity object ownership has a child relationship to fundamental entity Physical object
e.g. associative entity object ownership has a child relationship to fundamental entity Role player
e.g. associative entity birth place has a child relationship to fundamental entity Person
e.g. associative entity birth place has a child relationship to fundamental entity Place

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 BDM elements and the business terms. Therefore, the mapping must 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 must also be assigned to the specific parents of the associative entity when they are different from the more generic parents defined in BDM.

e.g. business term object ownership is assigned to associative entity object ownership
e.g. business term Birth place is assigned to associative entity birth place
e.g. business term Sales territory is assigned to associative entity sales territory
e.g. business term Sales area is assigned to associative entity sales territory