An introduction to enterprise-participant data model

Abstract

A data model, called the enterprise-participant (EP) model, is proposed. Unlike other traditional data models including object oriented models, the enterprise-participant model takes a different angle to look at the real world. The concepts of participant, enterprise hierarchy and biography hierarchy are introduced to construct databases representing the universe of discourse. Participants, as basic units, provide finer granularity than entities in traditional data models. Enterprise hierarchies provide recursive abstractions of enterprises from entire database applications to individual printable attributes. Biography hierarchies provide an integrated view of all facts about entities. Because of its capacity to simplify the complexities of applications and of its natural hierarchical characteristics, the EP model promises: (1) more "natural ways" to represent data for database applications with complexities, (2) a uniform, advanced language, and (3) world-wide unique participant names to immediately support data integrations and distributions in worldwide, distributed and heterogeneous computing environments.