Business Layer - Structure Concepts

Business Layer: Active Structure Concepts

  • Business Actor

  • Business Role

  • Business Collaboration

  • Business Interface

  • Location

Business Actor

Business Actor is an organisational entity capable of performing behavior. The Business Actor is someone who performs behaviour assigned to a business role. The Actor may be a person, group, department, business unit. The business actor exists both outside the organisation (i.e. customer) and inside the organisation (i.e. sales person). The Name of a Business Actor should be a noun.

Example

Business Role

The Business Role establishes responsibilities for behavior. These responsibilities can be associated with the Actor responsible, and with functions and processes that do the actual behaving. Also used to show the division of labor and responsibility within organisations. The name of a business role should be a noun.

  • Business role is responsible for performing specific behavior, to which an actor can be assigned.

  • Business Actor assigned to Business Role

  • Business Role assigned to Business Process or Business Function

  • Business / Application Interface used by Business Role

  • Business Role composed of Business Interfaces

Example

In the model below, the business role Insurance Seller is fulfilled by the Insurance Department actor and has telephone as a provided interface. The business role Insurance Buyer is fulfilled by the Customer actor, and has telephone as a required interface.

Business Collaboration

Business collaboration is aggregate of two or more roles that work together to perform collective behavior. A Business Collaboration will occur between two or more business roles. For instance, a salesperson collaborates with a customer (external) or a sales manager may collaborate with a sales person (internal). In a B2B context, organisations collaborate with each other. The name should preferably be a noun. Collaboration is a way of recognizing the existence of some link between roles. The actual behavior is regarded as a Business Interaction.

Example

  • Business Collaborations aggregated of roles

  • Business Collaboration assigned to Business Interactions

  • Business / Application Interface used by Business Collaboration

  • Business Collaboration composed of Business Interfaces

Business Interface

Business Interface is a point of access where a business service is made available to the environment. It is a point of actual contact. It could be physical, like talking to a salesperson in a shop. Or perhaps nowadays it is by means of phone or web (both examples of “channels”). Can be a provided or required interface. Should be named as a noun.

Example

This example puts an organization into its environment, consisting of external parties such as customers, suppliers, and other business partners. It is very useful in determining external dependencies and business interface and shows the value chain or network in which the actor operates.

  • Business Role composed of a Business Interface

  • Business Interface used by a Business Role

Example

  • Business Interface can also be assigned to Business Services

Location

The Location models the distribution of structural elements. Location is a conceptual point or extent in space.

Example

  • Location assigned to other Structural elements

  • Location assigned to other Behavioral elements

Example

This example describes the relationships between applications components in terms of the information flows between them, or in terms of the services they offer and use. This example creates an overview of the application landscape of an organization and expresses the (internal) co-operation or orchestration of services that together support the execution of a business process.

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