Business Object Design and Implementation
Object Technology Home Page
September 12, 1995
This document is a collection of terms and definitions used by the OMG BOMSIG. It is intended:
Where appropriate, BOMSIG has adopted terminology from the OMG Object Management Architecture (OMA) or from other industry groups engaged in related work. Where BOMSIG has defined new terms, these definitions are built upon existing terms and concepts to the extentpossible. Where a term or definition was adopted directly from another source, that source is referenced brackets following the definition, as in [Source: ... ].
Excepting minor grammatical adjustments for readability in the context of this glossary, the definitions included in this glossary have been approved (agreed upon) after discussion by a vote of the BOMSIG membership. Cross references or clarifications made for the purpose of this document are enclosed in brackets after the approved definition text, as in [Note: ... ].
As a property of a business object, a fact about the business object relevant to fulfilling its business purpose. [Note: The OMG term for attribute is state.]
As a property of a business object, the actions a business object is capable of performing to fulfill its purpose, including: recognizing events in its environment, changing its attributes, and interacting with other business objects. [Note: The OMG term for behavior is services, and behavior is implemented in program code by an object's methods.]
As a property of a business object, a statement of the meaning and purpose assigned to a business object by business experts.
A business object which represents which represents a business noun or actor. A business entity object is a specialization (type) of business object.
A representation of a thing active in the business domain, including at least its business name and definition, attributes, behavior, relationships and constraint s. A business object may represent, for example, a person, place or concept. The representation may be in a natural language, a modeling language, or a programming language. [Note: BOMSIG's use of the term business object is equivalent to business object type.]
As a property of a business object, the term used by business experts to classify a business object.
A process in the context of business organizational structure and policy for the purpose of achieving clear business objectives. [Source: Workflow Management Coalition]
A business object which represents a business process. A business process object is a specialization (type) of business object. The following words are intended to convey the difference between business object and business process object, but are not literal synonyms: action, set of steps, business verb, control object, routings, workflow.
As a property of a business object, a constraint which governs the behavior, relationships, and attributes of a business object.
An object created by instantiating a class. [Source: OMG Object Management Architecture Guide, Ed 2.0, September 1992] The following words are intended to convey the difference between object type and instance when discussing business objects, but are not literal synonyms: data record, database row, occurrence.
A combination of state and a set of methods that explicitly embodies an abstraction characterized by the behavior of relevant requests. An object is an instance of a class. An object models a real world entity and is implemented as a computational entity that encapsulates state and operations (internally implemented as data and methods) and responds to requests for services. [Source: OMG Object Management Architecture Guide, Ed 2.0, September 1992]
A class or definition for an object. Types are arranged into a type hierarchy that forms a directed acyclic graph.
A service that can be requested. An operation has an associated signature (protocol), which may restrict which actual parameters are possible in a meaningful request. [Source: OMG Object Management Architecture Guide, Ed 2.0, September 1992]
A set of parallel and/or serial logical work steps that are connected in support of a work objective. [Source: Workflow Management Coalition]
As a property of a business object, an association between business objects that reflects the interaction of their business purposes.
A computation that may be performed in response to a request. [Source: OMG Object Management Architecture Guide, Ed 2.0, September 1992]
Business Object Design and Implementation
Object Technology Home Page
Page hits
since 9/1/95