The five patterns used in the SID are: • EntitySpecification/Entity • Composite/Atomic • Entity/EntityRole • Business Interaction • CharacteristicSpecification/CharacteristicValue.

Entity/EntityRole – an entity can often play many roles, while retaining a basic set of facts about the entity in general. For example, an individual can play the role of customer and employee, but the individual’s name and address don’t change from role to role.

CharacteristicSpecification/CharacteristicValue – attempting to model every attribute for new and/or existing entities or attributes associated with new types (specifications) of entities is a near impossible task. This pattern enables new attributes to be dynamically defined, eliminating the need to explicitly model them.

Entities are further characterized by facts (attributes) that describe them and behavior (operations) that describe how the entities work.

Chapter 5 Instantiation and Implementation Options

Each developed ABE is documented in a SID addendum. The addenda are organized by SID domain.

Consolidating entities from the “top” down • Consolidating entities from the “bottom” up • Consolidating entities from the “middle” – top down and bottom up • Consolidating entities using a “type” attribute.

EntitySpecification/Entity

An ODS is usually designed to contain low level or atomic (indivisible) data such as transactions and prices as opposed to aggregated or summarized data such as net contributions.