The Atomic State Paradigm

Rationale

• As entity instances live their lives, they pass through a series of logical states.
• We must understand the transition rules affecting these states to correctly model the business' data and provide the process rules that will support process modeling.
• Remember: The instance isn't in a particular state because the Status Code attribute says so.... The Status Code attribute has its value because the entity instance is in that state.
• Do not be trapped by the illusion that the field is more important than the business rule.
• Since states are decomposable, any set of field values will represent ranges in the entity instance's life, obscusing more discrete stages.
• Distinctions within these ranges result in much of the exception processing that must be built into our computer systems today.
• Event + State = Process!
• More discrete stages will prevent massive processing changes as the business rules change.
• If logical data attributes are identified that are unique to specific states, then consider creating subtype entities to more accurately describe their characteristics, especially relationships with other entity types.

Trigger

• Multiple business events being conducted on data whle in a common business state depending upon the value of other attributes in the data model.