State of the State

The 'entity' definition endangers us of misidentifying states as static entities

What's one of the first things we learn in data modeling? It's that an entity is a person, place, thing, event, or concept of interest to the enterprise. As we analyze the business's terms, we dutifully classify them as entities using this scheme.

But nouns encompass more classifications than just those identified in the definition of an entity. According to Nan DeVincentis-Hayes, in Grammar and Diagramming Sentences (Garlic Press, 1997), a noun is "anything that can be named (objects, feelings, people, places, ideas, qualities, states)."

I understand why data modelers ignore feelings and qualities as potential entities. But why doesn't the definition of an entity include state? Our limited definition puts us in danger of incorrectly classifying nouns that really represent a state of interest instead as a person, place, thing, event, or concept.

STATE AFFILIATION

The concept of a business state is so fundamental to how an organization thinks about itself that business state needs to be addressed as its own type of business rule. Three definitions of state are relevant to the business world's perspective:

• A condition or way of being that exists at a particular time (Cambridge International Dictionary of English Online, www.dictionary.cambridge.org)
• The condition of a person or thing according to its characteristics or circumstances (Wordsmyth Educational DictionaryThesaurus, www.wordsmyth.net)
• A condition that is the result of a phase of development or structural transition (ibid).Based on these definitions, here are some characteristics of business states:
• States are used to group together objects (or entity instances) with similar characteristics from a pool of objects.
• After the enterprise determines it is interested in a specific condition, it defines the criteria used to determine whether an object qualifies for that business state.
• An object can move in and out of a business state based on its characteristics or circumstances at a given point of time.
• A state may identify a life cycle phase through which an object can evolve over time.

In many cases, conditions are so important that the organization gives them a name. Once named, a business state can easily be confused with an entity.

At this point, they may quietly slip through during the analysis phase, represented as a traditional entity, an attribute, or an allowed value of some other attribute.

PARSING POWER

How do we find the business states an enterprise is interested in? First, we examine the grammatical structure of the business rule statement. If we see any nouns modified by adjectives, a business state is probably lurking there.

For example, to a car rental agency, we encounter the concept of an available car. Before you can assign a car to a rental agreement, the car must be available. To determine whether a car is available, you must check that it satisfies the following criteria:

• Not rented
• Not assigned to another rental reservation
• Not being serviced
• Not being repaired
• Doesn't require maintenance
• Doesn't have major damage.

"Available car" is a business state of interest to the agency. The qualifying criteria for one business state may include other business states, each with its own qualifying criteria. Most of the states used are really life cycle states that the car can assume at any point in time. A given car might also be in several states at the same time.

READ BETWEEN THE LINES

Sometimes, we encounter an unmodified noun that still represents the state of an object. To identify these states, we must examine the definitions of terms for any embedded qualifying criteria. For example, a man is a person whose gender is male, while a woman is a person whose gender is female. Therefore, the nouns "man" and "woman" represent a state that a person can assume.

An unmodified noun might also represent a stage in a process. What's the difference between an order and a sale? Isn't an order really an incomplete sale? The sale progresses through a variety of stages: Item selection, ordering, fulfillment, delivery, and payment. These steps compose a sale.

At a grocery store or a fast food outlet, the sale progresses through all these stages almost instantaneously. But the sales transaction still progresses through all its life cycle stages.

How much time have we spent analyzing the order management process and its various states, when it was just part of a larger sales process? The order management process had to be put in place to handle sales that couldn't be completed immediately. Consequently, "order" became an entity on its own, rather than being recognized as a state of the entity "sales event."

STATED ROLE

Another interesting business state in disguise is the "role." Every relationship, by definition, involves at least two entities. In an employment relationship one party assumes the employee role while another party is the employer. An employee is a person who has agreed to provide services to the employer in exchange for a compensation package in accordance with employment laws. "Employee" is the name of a business state. The qualifying criterion is that the person has entered into an employment relationship with some organization. Therefore, that person is in the state of being an employee.

"Customer" is one of the most interesting and complex business states that an organization will encounter. The first step in a CRM initiative is to determine who qualifies as a customer. The relationship must be closely examined to understand which roles in the sales and servicing process are included in the enterprise's definition of customer.

Typically, the customer is defined as the party who buys products or services. In the realm of CRM, the scope of customer has been expanded beyond the buyer - for instance, those who influence the purchase decision, such as other members in the household. Or a person who buys something that someone else is going to use? All the people who assume these roles are candidates to be called a customer.

To further complicate the decision about who is a customer, different areas of the business may be interested in different customer roles. For example, marketing cares about the ultimate decision maker, but also about anyone who influences purchase. Accounts receivable is interested in the person to whom it sends the bill and expects payment from. To customer care units, anyone on the other end of the phone is a customer. Finally, the enterprise must identify which roles it means when it determines how many customers it has.

SPECIAL TREATMENT

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Business states are critical to an enterprise, yet many of them are disguised as traditional entity types in business rules. Look beyond the noun to determine whether it qualifies as state - and treat it accordingly as a special type of business rule.

Terry Moriarty (terry@inastrol.com), president of Inastrol, a Southern California-based information management consultancy, specializes in customer relationship information and metadata management.