Implement Universal Data Model / ARTS Retail Data Model in R

Hi,

what is the best way to implement the Data Model as described in e.g.  Universal Data Models from Len Silverston in Rollbase or in the Arts Data Model.

Both data models try to step away from  maintaining information in various entities that are portrayed as completely separate entities.

For instance, there may be a customer table, a supplier table, a manufacturer , and a department table.

The problem is that an organization may play many roles, depending on the particular circumstance. E.g. a supplier can also be a customer.

This is solved by role management

A second problem the data model tries to solve is that different information needs to be stored for "companies" and for physical persons.

For this to work a super entity "Party" is introduced. In the data model you have

• People : a particular person's information
• Organization can be a company, an organization within the company, a supplier, a customer, and so forth.
• Party : super entity

• stores the common characteristics and relationships that people and organisations share
• allows to track consistent information about the person or organization once

If It would be e.g. a java class. Person and Organisation would inherit from Party.

How can this data model be implemented in Rollbase ?

Tore