Linking and Binding Business Elements to Business Attributes

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Go Up to Session 4: Creating a Conceptual Model Diagram (Evaluation Guide)

A common use case for binding an attribute to a business element is to enforce naming standards. For example, in the process of “data rationalization”, a common directive for customers is to: (a) identify the numerous naming variations in an organization, and (b) define, create, and enforce a common standard for these variations.

For example, the following organization has several naming variations on the common term “Customer ID”. In the Customer entity, it’s called “CUST_NUM”, in the Person entity, it’s called “CUST_ID”, and in the Business entity, it’s called “CUSTOMER_NUMBER”. To unify these variations into a common business term, a Business Element can be created with the name “Customer ID”.

As a first step (or a final step for many organizations), you may want to simply identify the variations of the element and link them to the common Business Element. In many organizations, different names are allowed (for regional differences, language translation, technical platform naming conventions, etc.), and you will want to semantically link these varying names to a common business element.

You would satisfy the use-case above using a Link in EA/Studio to document and visualize the name variations.

And you could visualize this relationship in several ways: on the Model View tree and in the Diagram View.

Once these variations are defined, you can enforce a common naming standard by binding the attributes to the business element. Once this has been performed, the attributes will be renamed and their names, definitions, etc. will be driven by the common business element, “Customer ID”

Bindings can be created in two ways:

Via the Property Editor of the Attribute:

1 Double-click the business attribute “CUST_NUM” in the business entity labeled “CUSTOMER” to open the Property View.
2 The Bound Business Element list box contains all the business elements. Select “Customer ID” from the list. Notice that the business attribute has been renamed on the diagram to match the business element name.
3 In the diagram, double-click the attribute Customer ID to open the Property View and click the Impact Analysis tab. The binding action is displayed as a hierarchy.

Via Drag and Drop:

You can drag a business element from the Model View tree to a business entity.

  • A business attribute is created with the same name, data type, description, and notes as the business element.
  • The business attribute is automatically bound to that element.

In the following example, an attribute named “Social Security Number” would be created in the Business Entity, which is bound to the Business Element “Social Security Number”.

Session 4 Conclusion

In this session, you have learned:

  • How to create a Conceptual model and diagram.
  • How to create Subject Area mappings
  • How to export a Conceptual model to IDERA’s ER/Studio.
  • How to link and bind Business Elements to Business Attributes.

Session 5 covers some of the basic formatting options you can use to enhance your modeling diagrams.

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