Re: Len Silverston's Universal Data Models sanity

"Pascal Damian" <pascaldamian_at_icqmail.com> wrote in message news:6bd4a4d3.0405072134.66f63029_at_posting.google.com...
> Leandro Guimarães Faria Corsetti Dutra <leandro_at_dutra.fastmail.fm> wrote
in message news:<pan.2004.05.07.12.14.36.209211_at_dutra.fastmail.fm>...
> > Em Fri, 07 May 2004 01:56:28 -0700, Pascal Damian escreveu:
> >
> > > In what way does the Brazilian accounting model differ from
> > > US (and other parts of the world)?
> >
> > > Surely the basic concepts and entities
> > > of double entry, debit/credit, accounts /chart of accounts,
transactions,
> > > etc are the same?
> >
> > I don't know what's a chart of accounts, the rest of the
> > concepts apply.
> >
> > > What does the Brazilian accounting model look like?
> >
> > I never worked with US accounting, I know it is sufficiently
> > different that US companies in Brazil keep two sets of accounts, one
> > to show to headquarters, other for the legal obligations in the
> > country.
>
> Yeah, all international companies will need to maintain multiple
> books. But these are due to the different accounting _rules_ and
> _practices_. A sufficiently generic accounting model will be able to
> handle these fine, as the business rules itself are not embedded
> inside the model. I had only read Silverton's 1st edition of the Data
> Model Resource Book, and I remember his accounting model is pretty
> generic (transactions, transaction detail, chart of accounts,
> accounts, account types).
>
> Things like:
> - how, when, how much an asset should be depreciated;
> - how to calculate income tax, sales tax, etc;
> - when should an income be earned, or posted, or recorded;
>
> should belong in the business rules, _not_ in the model. Otherwise the
> model will be overly complex, very brittle, and needs to be modified
> every now and then, for every company.
>
But the other extreme is a generalized model that is sparse, holds lots of nulls, and requires code to enforce basic integrity and data management. ERP products are a good example of this. They are as brittle for exactly the opposite reason. So pick your poison.

Regards,

Dan
> --
> Pascal
Received on Sun May 09 2004 - 00:47:46 CEST