The Supply-Demand Paradigm

The Supply-Demand Paradigm attempts to understand strategic many-to-many relationships by positing the existence of some key business event entity type between the related entities. Most useful between two fundamental entities, the resulting association identifies customer and supplier data relationships, and the associated item of demand.

Rationale

We're positing an event that would cause interaction between the entities.

We can iterate the process if we find that the result still includes a many-to-many relationship.

This results in an event within an event.

The initial break-down of many-to-many relationships into associative entities often begins as a more-or-less mechanical process.

Subsequent analysis looks to identify the demand aspects of the relationship, and what item needs to be supplied.

The resulting association is usually the target of some kind of processing system. The associated entities are generally maintained by systems.

While both associated entities need to be maintained, the customer tends to get more attention during implementation, and is often the target of separate project implementation activities.

Trigger

Existence of many-to-many relationships between high-level fundamental or attributive entity types.