Business Objects

See Also

A Business Object is a topic or an area of interest in the business or in the information system. Examples of Business Objects for a car rental company could be Customers, Accounts, Branches, Car Fleet, Rental, Shops, and Offers.

A Business Object is a subdivision within a Business Area. In a car rental company, a Business Area of Customer Relationships could contain the Business Objects of Registration, Accounts and Offers. Registration could cover the way in which customers are registered in the system: name, address and contact information. Accounts could cover the ways in which the company deals with frequent customers. Offers could cover special temporary offers proposed to the public.

Finding the best way to divide a system into Business Areas and Business Objects often requires time and discussion, especially because Business Objects tend to having overlapping edges (elements that functionally belong to two Business Objects at a time).

Business Objects have Data Content. USoft TeamWork lets you specify which Domains, Tables and Relationships belong to a Business Object. Starting from a prototype data model and assigning each entity (= table) to a tentative Business Object is often a good way to start finding workable subdivisions.

From a technical point of view, a business object is implemented by a range of software elements, including data elements (tables, relationships, domains...), rule/process elements (business rules process steps, batch jobs...), and presentation features (windows, web pages...).

USoft TeamWork as well as USoft Windows Designer offer facilities to export and import entire Business Objects from a repository into another. The entire contents of a Business Object will be imported (with the option to include or exclude client-server GUI design), not just the USoft TeamWork definitions.