Process Data
From Business Process Management, BPM and Workflow Automation Wiki | BizAgi BPMS
<keywords content="keywords"> data model, entity relationship, attributes, information, context, relationships, entities, entity, attributes, attrib, attribute, parameter </keywords>
Contents |
Process Data
Once the flowchart has been modeled, it is necessary to design a data model that organizes the cases’ information that will be used in the different activities of the process. The definition of the data model is the second step of the process wizard and it will contain the structure of the information required by each process to be used in the Work portal, in business rules, interfaces, etc. The design of the process data is very important because a good definition will guarantee that each activity requests the necessary information and stores it correctly for the process flow to be performed successfully. This chapter provides a description the main concepts and a guide to create and edit the basic elements of the process data.
General Concepts
Entity
The Entities are tables that store information used in each process. Each entity has a context and should only store information about that context. Thus, a project needs many entities, each one storing specific information. For example, a travel agency process needs entities to store information about clients, hotels, flights, among others. Information of hotels should not be saved where the client’s information is. The idea is to have entities that save information about something in particular. The client’s information stored in the entity Client will be his/her name, address, phone number, age, marital status, gender, etc. The entity Hotel will store the hotel’s name, address, city, and so on. For more information about how to create, edit, delete please read:
- How to Create an Entity
- How to Delete an Entity
- How to Edit an Entity
- Entities Advanced Properties
- Context Entity and Process Entity
Attribute
An attribute is a basic unit of information that belongs to an entity. What we described before as the information stored in each entity, is actually defined by attributes. To store the client’s age, we need to create an attribute called Age in the Client entity.
Each entity should have an exclusive identifier, which is an attribute or a set of attributes that identify each of the registers of the entity exclusively, so that no two registers can have the same value in that identifier. These identifiers are called Business Keys.
Please read for more information about:
Relationship
Relationships are associations or connections between entities. These relationships are built on attributes; these attributes are known as foreign keys. For example the entity Client needs an attribute called Gender that will be a relationship to the entity Gender where we will actually store all the possible genders.
Each relationship has a type of relationship, or cardinality that depends on how the two entities are related. There are four types of relationships, One to One (1, 1) One to Many (1, n), Many to One (n, 1), or Many to Many (n, m).
1 - 1: In this type of relationship, once an element from one entity is set, the other is known. Example: Country and capital, each Country would have one capital.
1 - N: This is the most common type of association, where just one component from one entity can be associated with none, one or many components from another entity. For instance, one person can have several telephone numbers. In this relationship, the entity with cardinality (n) should have one attribute (Country) that will relate it with the main entity (the one with cardinality 1), that is, the point from which the relation is being analyzed. The relationship should be created in the main entity.
|
Example: In the entity called City, the relationship "The Country Has Many Cities" will be created. |
N - M: The n - m relationship is the situation where two entities are related to each with the possibility to have many components related in the other entity.
|
Example: vehicle has one or more accessories and an accessory can be present in one or more vehicles. |
For more information please read Relationships
Bizagi Entities
Bizagi has four types of entities that help each process to have an organized data to be easily accessed.
Application Entity
The application entity centralizes the information of each process and it is from where the data model is spread out. This entity is generated automatically when an application is created and it is named after the application.
Master Entity
Master entities are business entities that are related with information exclusive to each case. Its information (or the data stored) is updates as a process flows, that is, the data is stored according to what the end user enters in the Work Portal.
They are connected in a data model through the Process Entity.
Process Entity
The Process Entity is the principal entity through which a user accesses the rest of the data model entities. When the model is created the Process entity of each process will have a star.
Parameter Entities
These entities store predefined values, or parameter values, that are independent from the processes’ execution. For example, the entity Gender contains the values Male and Female. However it is possible to relate the parameter entities information to a case. In a master entity create a relationship to parameter entity. This way, the attribute of the relationship will store the value selected of the parameter entity for the specific case.
Parent and child parameter entities
Parameter entities can be defined to have a parent – child connection. That is, a parameter entity will be the parent entity and another one will be the child, so that the child’s values depend on the values taken by the parent, when selected in the Work Portal. The best example is the City – Country relationship. When the end user selects a Country in an activity from a drop down list, the list of cities must be filtered to show only the ones belonging to the chosen country. With this connection, the entities can be displayed in the Work Portal as a Dynamic Combo. For more information please read Create Parent Entities and Dynamic Combo example.
Manage parameter entities
Values for parameter entities are managed in the Work Portal via the Admin menu. In this menu end users can add, edit and disable values of the parameter entities For more information please read Entities Administration and Include Values in Parameter Entities
For all parameter entities it is necessary to define how users will interact with them; Parameter entities can be:
- Manageable in the production environment or
- Manageable in the development environment.
To be manageable in the production environment means that the entity’s values can be edited by end users. If an entity is NOT manageable in the production environment, then its values will only be editable in the development environment. Furthermore, an entity that is NOT manageable in the production environment will not be displayed in the Admin Entity list, and its values will not be editable by end users.
This property is defined when the parameter entity is created: Manage values in production environment only
Click for more information about how to Manage values in production or development environment
- An example of a parameter entity that should NOT be manageable in the production environment (so it is manageable in the development environment) is Gender. This table has two and only two possible values: male and female. Then, it must not be edited by end users.
- On the other hand, the parameter table Documents Requested, that contains all the documents that are requested to every client opening a bank account, can vary significantly. Required documents can be added or deleted, according to regulations. Therefore this table should be editable by end users and thus be Manageable in the production environment.
In Bizagi Studio parameter entities will look different according to their property, as shown below.
System Entities
These entities belong to the Bizagi’s internal data model. This group of entities include information concerning the User, the areas, locations, jobs, roles, skills and other information created by default. These entities cannot be modified. However, users can create relationships from other entities to include that information in the data model.
Elements of Bizagi Entities
Each entity in Bizagi consists of the following elements:
Attributes: In this element, the attributes of an entity are created, searched, modified or deleted.
Diagrams: The Diagram is a graphic representation of entities, attributes and relationships. Diagrams can show the entire data model of the project or just one part of it. Inside each diagram it is possible to create entities, attributes and relationships.
Forms: In this element, the forms of an entity are created, searched, modified or deleted.
Queries: In this element, query forms are created, searched, modified or deleted for each entity.
Values: In this element, the values of each attribute stored in the entity are displayed.
Expressions: Each entity can have conditions and validations that can be used in the Forms to control the behavior of each activity, defined in accordance with the organization’s expected business performance.
Related Articles
<comments />
