Hi Wai! As you point out, a party without a relationship has little value. However (unless rolled into an atomic transaction, and perhaps even then) you must create a party before you can create a relationship, which uses a party_id as an external reference key. So until that first relationship is created, the party can (and must) exist on its own.
The only time I can think that such a party might be useful is in the context of lead retrieval in the CRM context, where you may get a pile of leads (from a trade show, advertisement, or whatever) and may want to put them into the system for appropriate follow-up. In that case, you could either create them immediately with a bogus/temporary role (e.g. "unqualified lead") or wait until there is a real relationship (like "customer") to create the relationship or role. Both methods are defensible in my view, with their own pros and cons. In any event there is likely to be some notes, lead source data, contact info, and other stuff associated with the party, even if there is no real relationship or role yet. Don't know if that answers your question, but its all I could come up with... -- Matt Warnock <mwarn...@ridgecrestherbals.com> RidgeCrest Herbals, Inc. On Wed, 2010-08-25 at 16:01 -0700, Wai wrote: > Thanks BJ, I'm aware of that. > This would indicates that a PartyRelationship entry exist and it is marked > as _NA_. > What I meant is, must all party and partygroup created in ofbiz require a > corresponding, one or more, entries in PartyRelationship? If that is not > so, under what condition would this be the case? > I'm assuming that a party or partygroup created in ofbiz must serve some > purpose to the organization(s). Hence some sort of relationship must exist. > Otherwise it would make no sense to create it. > Thanks > Wai
