Local view of a business process

Designing a structure that satisfies the data requirements of the business processes in an application requires an understanding of the requirements for each of those business processes.

A local view of the business process describes these requirements because the local view provides:

• A list of all the data elements the process requires and their controlling keys
• The conceptual data structure developed for each process, showing how the data elements are grouped into data aggregates
• The mappings between the data aggregates in each process

This topic uses a company that provides technical education to its customers as an example. The education company has one headquarters, called HQ, and several local education centers, called Ed Centers. HQ develops the courses offered at each of the Ed Centers. Each Ed Center is responsible for scheduling classes it will offer and for enrolling students for those classes.

A class is a single offering of a course on a specific date at an Ed Center. There might be several offerings of one course at different Ed Centers, and each of these offerings is a separate class.

The local views used in this topic are for the following business processes in an education application:

• Current Roster
• Schedule of Classes
• Instructor Skills Report
• Instructor Schedules

Notes for local views:

• The asterisks (*) in the data structures for each of the local views indicate the data elements that identify the data aggregate. This is the data aggregate's key; some data aggregates require more than one data element to uniquely identify them.
• The mappings between the data aggregates in each process are given in mapping notation. A one-to-many mapping means for each A aggregate there are one or more B aggregates; shown like this: ◄────────►►

  A many-to-many relationship means that for each A aggregate there are many B aggregates, and for each B aggregate, there are many A aggregates; shown as follows: ◄◄────────►►

Local view 1: current roster

This topic describes the elements, the data structure, the data aggregates, and the mapping of the relationships between the data aggregates used to satisfy the data requirements of the Current Roster business process.

List of current roster data elements

The following is a list of the data elements and their descriptions for our technical education provider example.

Data element

Description

CRSNAME

Course name

CRSCODE

Course code

LENGTH

Length of class

EDCNTR

Ed Center offering class

DATE

Date class is offered

CUST

Customer that sent student

LOCTN

Location of customer

STUSEQ#

Student's sequence number

STUNAME

Student's name

STATUS

Student's enrollment status

ABSENCE

Student's absences

GRADE

Student's grade for class

INSTRS

Instructors for class

The following figure shows the conceptual data structure for the current roster.

Figure 1. Current roster conceptual data structure

Current roster mappings

The mappings for the current roster are:

• Course ◄────────►► Class
• Class ◄────────►► Student
• Class ◄────────►► Instructor
• Customer/location◄────────►► Student

Local view 2: schedule of classes

This topic describes the elements, the data structure, the data aggregates, and the mapping of the relationships between the data aggregates used to satisfy the data requirements of the Schedule of Classes business process.

List of schedule of classes data elements

The following is a list of the schedule of classes and their descriptions for our example.

Data element

Description

CRSCODE

Course code

CRSNAME

Course name

LENGTH

Length of course

PRICE

Price of course

EDCNTR

Ed Center where class is offered

DATE

Dates when class is offered at a particular Ed Center

The following figure shows the conceptual data structure for the class schedule.

Figure 2. Schedule of classes conceptual data structure

Schedule of classes mappings

The only mapping for this local view is:

• Course ◄────────►► Class

Local view 3: instructor skills report

This topic describes the elements, the data structure, the data aggregates, and the mapping of the relationships between the data aggregates used to satisfy the data requirements of the Instructor Skills Report business process.

List of instructor skills report data elements

The following is a list of the instructor skills report data elements and their descriptions for our technical education provider example.

Data element

Description

INSTR

Instructor

CRSCODE

Course code

CRSNAME

Course name

The following figure shows the conceptual data structure for the instructor skills report.

Figure 3. Instructor skills report conceptual data structure

Instructor skills report mappings

The only mapping for this local view is:

• Instructor ◄────────►► Course

Local view 4: instructor schedules

This topic describes the elements, the data structure, the data aggregates, and the mapping of the relationships between the data aggregates used to satisfy the data requirements of the Instructor Schedules business process.

List of instructor schedules data elements

The following is a list of the instructor schedules data elements and their descriptions for our example.

Data element

Description

INSTR

Instructor

CRSNAME

Course name

CRSCODE

Course code

EDCNTR

Ed Center

DATE

Date when class is offered

The following figure shows the conceptual data structure for the instructor schedules.

Figure 4. Instructor schedules conceptual data structure

Instructor schedules mappings

The mappings for this local view are:

• Instructor ◄────────►► Course
• Course ◄────────►► Class