Hi Jacopo, Deprecating the PartyRole would mean definitely going against the data model book in such a very fundamental domain (Party) would it not?
Every entity in that book serves a purpose which you explained yourself. Furthermore, reporting on all roles past and present in all kinds of contexts is very easy through PartyRole instead of scavenging data from a hundred different places. I also think PartyRole is used for security to allow attaching the party to different contexts only if they are allowed to play that role. My 2 cents Taher Alkhateebn On Oct 12, 2014 8:10 AM, "Jacopo Cappellato" < jacopo.cappell...@hotwaxmedia.com> wrote: > Hi Mansour, > > I will start with one example. > Let's say that in OFBiz we have two companies (i.e. two PartyGroup), "ABC > inc" and "CDE inc", that run two different stores selling goods to their > customers; the only way to represent that a given person "John Black" is > customer of "ABC inc", but not of "CDE inc", is using a party relationship: > "John Black is a customer of the seller ABC inc". Now suppose that John > Black is also an employee of "CDE inc"; we can represent it with another > party relationship: "John Black is an employee of the employer CDE inc". > The "party role" entity should be used to specify what are the roles that > a party can play. In our example, for John Black we would have two roles: > "customer" and "employee". > > Summary: > * "party role": the roles that a given party *can* play > * "party relationship": the actual roles played by a given party (with > respect to other parties). > > Unfortunately in OFBiz, most of the screens and services are not > implemented considering "party relationships" but only "party roles". This > simplification is a weakness of the current implementation. > For example, a screen that lists all the "customers" doesn't make much > sense if you don't specify the company that is selling goods. Currently, if > in OFBiz a party has the role of "customer" then the system considers the > party is a customer in all the relationships. > > In my opinion we should refactor this by: > a) deprecating the party role entity > b) modify the existing code that is using party roles to use party > relationships > c) use an _NA_ party id to specify party relationship that apply to all > parties > d) in order to do #b we will need to specify, in most of the applications, > the company in which the logged in user is connected: in this way if a user > is associated to "ABC inc", in the "find customer" screen she will only see > parties that are customers of "ABC inc" > e) (optional) normalize the from/to positions in PartyRelationship by > sorting them by role type id (this would simplify lookups etc) > > I hope it is useful information and I didn't add more confusion. > > Jacopo > > On Oct 11, 2014, at 11:57 PM, Mansour Al Akeel <mansour.alak...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > I consulted the Data Model Resource Book to refresh my memory about > > the modelling for the roles and relationship for Party. > > > > In ofbiz, we have PartyRelationship between two parties. So each party > > ID is used as a key, combined with the relationship type. The book > > mentions on page 42, that when customizing the model, it's recommended > > to draw the relationship between party roles. > > > > The part that I find confusing is, if we have the two party IDs in the > > party_role entity, why don't we create the relationship between two > > party roles, instead of duplicating the information in the > > party_relationship entity ? For example, currently we have, > > > > party_relationship: > > - from party id > > - to party id > > - from role type id > > - to role type id > > - start date > > - end date ..... > > > > Can't we just use, > > party_relationship: > > -from role > > - to role > > - party relationship type > > > > assuming John has the role of developer. IBM has the role of employer. > > We can use the directly in the party relationship. Using the current > > model, we need to add the role_type to the party_relationship. If John > > is no longer a developer, then we need to update in two entities, the > > party_relationship, and the roles. > > > > I am not sure I understand the description in the book, and the design > in ofbiz. > > > > Can someone kindly clarify the picture for me ?? > > > > Thank you. > >
