Dataphin:Create and manage business entities

Business entities comprise business objects and business activities:

• Business objects are the subjects and objects involved in business operations. Typically, business objects are tangible entities that exist independently of events, such as customers, employees, and products, or abstract entities like regions, organizational relationships, and product categories.

• Business activities are the actions taken by one or more business objects at a specific time to achieve a particular goal or outcome. The creation of business entities must precede the development of logical dimension tables.

This topic outlines the procedures for creating and managing business entities.

Prerequisites

• Before beginning operations, ensure the data module's subject area has been created. For detailed instructions, see Create a subject area.

• Only super administrators, system administrators, or module architects can create business objects. If you lack the necessary permissions, configure user roles and permissions accordingly.

Limits

If the feature for asset operations is enabled without the intelligent R&D edition being purchased, creating logical dimension tables is not supported. Entity types, related logical table information, and filtering entities based on entity type and instantiation status will not be displayed.

Create a business entity

1. Navigate to Planning > Data Architecture from the top menu bar on the Dataphin home page.

2. On the Business Unit page, click New - Create Business Entity in the operation column of the desired data module to open the Create Business Entity panel.

3. In the Create Business Entity panel, enter the required parameters.

   Parameter	Description
   Entity Name	Follow these naming conventions: Use Chinese characters, letters, numbers, underscores (_), and hyphens (-). Limit the name to a maximum of 64 characters.
   Encoding	Follow these naming conventions: Use letters, numbers, and underscores (_). Limit the encoding to a maximum of 64 characters.
   Entity Type	Choose between Business Object and Business Activity as follows: Business Object: An entity involved in business operations, typically static in nature. Regular Object: These are complex objects that possess numerous properties. In a more specific context, business objects fall under this category. Examples include tangible entities like buyers and products in the retail sector, along with more abstract concepts such as categories and regions. Enumeration Object: These are simple, fundamental objects with values that can be explicitly listed. For instance, gender, with possible values of male, female, or unknown. Virtual Object: These are basic objects that lack properties in their business definitions. An example of this is the concept of a name. Hierarchical Object: This refers to a collection of objects that are organized in a hierarchical structure within multiple business objects. For instance, administrative regions are structured hierarchically from country to province, city, and county. Business Activity: A specific action or set of actions carried out by one or more business objects to accomplish a particular goal at a given time. Business Event: A business event is typically a brief occurrence that signifies a change in a business process's state, such as the event of placing a sales order. Business Snapshot: This represents the condition and outcomes at a specific moment within a sequence of business activities, like the snapshot of inventory or account balances. Business Flow: A business flow is a sequence of activities with a defined lifecycle, starting and ending at specific points, and involving transitions of state throughout, such as a sales order's journey from placement to delivery and completion.
   Subject Area	The business entity must associate with this subject area.
   Owner	Choose a member from the Dataphin member list to assign as the business object's owner.
   Description	Provide a concise description of the business object.

   When creating Regular Object, Business Event, Business Flow entity types, you must also complete the following configuration parameters:

   Entity Type	Parameter
   Regular Object	Inherit from Entity, Associate Entity
   Business Event	Associate Entity
   Business Flow	Preceding Business Flow, Associate Entity, Flow Event

   Explanation of Parameters:

   • Inherit from Entity: Choose the primary entity for the current business object, which will serve as its parent entity. The current object becomes a child entity, representing a specialized version of the parent entity with additional, specific properties. For instance, while a registered member is a user, they possess unique attributes exclusive to members. Here, 'user' is the parent entity, and 'registered member' is the child entity.

   • Associate Entity: When an attribute of entity A is linked to entity B, entity B is considered the associate entity of A. For example, the business object Customer includes an attribute Address (business object), making Address the associate entity of Customer.

   • Preceding Business Flow: Business flow A must take place before business flow B, with A being essential for the initiation of B. Thus, A is identified as the preceding business flow to B. In the context of retail, the purchase process must precede the fulfillment and delivery processes. Consequently, the purchase is the preceding business flow to fulfillment and delivery. Multiple preceding business flows may exist.

   • Flow Event: A business flow can be decomposed into a series of events. In the realm of E-commerce, for example, a sales order can be segmented into events such as order placement, payment, shipment, and order closure. Events should be selected in the sequence they occur.

4. Click Confirm to finalize the creation of the business entity.

Publish a business entity

On the Data Architecture page, use the following guide to publish a business entity. Published business entities are eligible for reference by logical dimension tables.

Create a logical dimension table

On the Data Architecture page, follow the guide below to create a logical dimension table. For details on configuring the parameters of the logical dimension table, see Create a regular logical dimension table.

View the version information

1. On the Data Architecture page, use the guide illustrated below to access the Version Information dialog box.

   

2. In the Version Information dialog box, you can view the details and compare different versions.

Unpublish a business entity

On the Business Entity page, follow the illustrated guide below to unpublish a business entity. The entity's status will change to Unpublished after the process.

Edit a business entity

On the Data Architecture page, use the guide shown below to edit a business entity. For parameter descriptions when editing, refer to Create and Manage Business Entities.

Delete a business entity

On the Business Entity page, use the guide depicted below to delete a business entity.

View the entity relationship diagram

In Dataphin, you can visually explore the main entities and their interrelationships. On the Business Entity page, follow the instructions in the diagram below to view the entity relationship diagram.

What to do next

After creating business entities for the data module, proceed to create logical dimension tables. For detailed steps, see Create a regular logical dimension table.