Business Layer Relationships (Continued)
This is the last of three articles concentrating on the relationships associated with each of the elements in the Business Concept library. Certain relationships apply to each concept and should be understood by EA practitioners. The relationships were stated in the previous articles; this article expands on those aspects.
Business Informational Concepts
Representation
A logical view of a Business Object. A single business object can have a number of different representations.
- a. can realize one or more specific business objects
- b. may realize one or more business objects,
- c. can be associated with a meaning that it represents.
Meaning
Intellectual background of a Business Object or its Representation. A meaning can be associated with a representation that carries this meaning.
Value
The perceived worth, importance or utility of a product. A value can be associated with business services and, indirectly, with the products they are part of, and the roles or actors that use them.
Product
A set of services that is marketed and sold to customers. A product may aggregate business services or application services, as well as a contract. A value may be associated with a product.
Contract
The organ legally establishing an agreement between the business and the customer. A contract is a specialization of a business object.
The relationships that apply to a business object also apply to a contract.
Contracts may be accessed by a business process, function, a business interaction, a business event, or a business service.
Contracts may have association, specialization, aggregation, or composition relationships with other Contracts.
A contract may have an aggregation relationship with a product.
Next time…
Next week’s article begins a series focused on the Application Layer Concepts.
This blog includes extracts of the ArchiMate 2.0 Specification, Copyright © 2009-2012 The Open Group. ArchiMate® is a registered trademark of The Open Group. For the original material please refer to this page.
