Re: Definition of the word "business" terms?

M Sweger wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Alot of books (on DBMS', Java and Corba) and people, talk about
> the word "business" when designing software for some business application.
> The following terms seem to used interchangeably without regard to the
> individual distinction that separates their meaning - meaning that one
> definition implies that all the terms are the same. Here is a list of
> what I've put together and some definitions I think makes them unique
> although some people say that the are all the same.
>
> Business Data -- this is a piece or set of data that represents
> the business operation but doesn't have any
> defining relationship or validation with
> respect to each other until validated and organized
> by Business rules and business logic in the form
> of an application representing the vertical
> business market which defines the business
> enterprise.

This term is also used to distinguish between "business data" and "infrastructure data". The former is information which is of interest and recognizable to the business. The latter is typically control information which is usually generated by the application and used to organize and/or control operation of the application.

>
>
> Business Rule -- this is a condition that validates the data
> necessary to perform the intended business
> operation. Some examples would be, validating
> that data for a field on the computer screen
> is not empty, is numeric/alphabetic, is a valid
> code (i.e. part number) etc. So essentially
> validates data!

Validation is but one category of business rule. A business rule in the full sense is any executable code which operates upon business data and/or returns results which are or affect business data.

>
>
> Business Logic -- this is the process steps that take a set of
> "business rules" and validates or controls
> the flow of steps necessary to perform the
> intended business operation. An example
> would be, If rule1 is true then do rule2 and
> rule3. So essentially controls the flow
> of business rule(s).

The notion of business logic is again, in my experience, most often used to distinguish itself from logic (programming) which performs non-business functions (e.g.: utility functions, infrastructure and the like such as printer drivers, data communication functions and the like.)

>
>
> Business Object -- this is also defined as a "domain object", whereby
> an object contains state (the validated business
> data as rules) operated on by the business logic
> which are the methods used in OO. In addition
> an object(s) working together represent a vertical
> business market; however, a set of different
> business object(s) working together define the
> business enterprise. An example would be,
> a business object that represents the accounting
> department and another business object represents
> manufacturing.....; both of these business objects
> for each vertical market then define your business
> enterprise.

As a data modeler, I think of a business object as a collection of one or more related logical entities (as found in entity/relationship diagrams). For example, "customer" may be a business object which actually consists of several logical entities including a customer base (the customer's name and identifier), one or more customer addresses, one or more customer contacts each of which has one or more telephone numbers and so on.

>
>
> I'd appreciate any feedback on this terminology to clarify their
> definitions and any other "business" (???) term not mentioned here.
> In discussing these concepts with my fellow workers, there seems to be
> varying definitions of the terminalogy which is leading people to mass
> confusion. Hence, people are going in circles trying to design and
> implement a Business application based on the Corba model to
> interact eventually with a DBMS and anything else.
>
> TIA
>
> --
> Mike,
> mikesw_at_whiterose.net

My comments are based on an "information engineering" (IE) background. The OO literature uses some of the same terminology with slightly modified meanings for the OO world. This makes it confusing when dealing with OO and earlier methodologies simultaneously. Thus, you must carefully discriminate between database oriented sources versus Java, Corba and other object oriented sources as the terms are used differently in the OO versus non-OO worlds. Received on Tue Dec 30 1997 - 00:00:00 CST