Changes between Version 2 and Version 3 of DeveloperGuidelines/PersonEntityModel

Timestamp:

03/07/12 20:58:59 (13 years ago)

Author:

Dominic König

Comment:

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DeveloperGuidelines/PersonEntityModel

@@ -6 +6 @@
 == Introduction ==
 
-We start with an obviously simple (read: small) set of person entities:
+We start with an obviously simple (read: ''small'') set of person entities:
 
 [[Image(pe_hierarchy1.png)]]
 
-Each of these entities can define a number of roles which affiliated entities can have:
+=== Roles ===
+
+Each of these entities can define a number of roles by which other entities can be ''affiliated'' with them:
 
 [[Image(pe_hierarchy2.png)]]
 
-Now we link the respective entities to the roles, which defines an already pretty complex relationship network:
+=== Affiliation ===
+
+If we link the ''affiliated'' entities to these roles, then we get an already pretty complex network of relationships:
 
 [[Image(pe_hierarchy3.png)]]
 
-Some of these relationships define a hierarchy, while others don't:
+=== Hierarchy ===
+
+Some affiliations define a hierarchy (in the sense of "reporting units" or "organisational units"), while others don't:
 
 [[Image(pe_hierarchy4.png)]]
 
-This hierarchy defines ancestor paths among the person entities:
+=== Ancestor Paths ===
+
+To analyze this hierarchy, we look at the ancestor paths from one entity to another entity:
 
 [[Image(pe_hierarchy5.png)]]
 
-If we remove the roles, this becomes more obvious:
+It becomes a little bit more obvious if we remove the roles from the diagram:
 
 [[Image(pe_hierarchy6.png)]]
 
-Now we can make the actual "hierarchy" visible by moving each entity to a certain "hierarchy level":
+These paths can easily be expressed as tuples of IDs, e.g. for Person Y we have two paths [4,1] and [5,2], and for Person X we have [5,2] and [2]. Apparently, Person Y is affiliated with two different organisations here.
+
+=== Hierarchy Levels ===
+
+To make the actual "hierarchy" visible, we need to move each entity to a particular "hierarchy level":
 
 [[Image(pe_hierarchy7.png)]]
 
-As you can see, "Person Y" belongs to two different organisations here - with two different ancestor paths.
+Due to the heterogenous nature of this network, the "hierarchy" is not universal, but rather limited to each path - i.e. it isn't clear whether a "team" is higher in the hierarchy than a "facility" or vice versa, but within each path it becomes explicit.
 
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