Naming and Defining Entities and Attributes › Entity Definitions › Descriptions

Descriptions

A description should be a clear and concise statement that tells whether an object is or is not the thing you are trying to define. Often such descriptions can be fairly short. Be careful, however, that the description is not too general or uses terms that are not defined. Here are a couple of examples, one of good quality and one that is questionable:

Example of good description:

A COMMODITY is something that has a value that can be determined in an exchange.

This is a good description since, after reading it, you know that something is a COMMODITY if someone is, or would be, willing to trade something for it. If someone is willing to give you three peanuts and a stick of gum for a marble, then you know that a marble is a COMMODITY.

Example of bad description:

A CUSTOMER is someone who buys something from our company.

This is not a good description since you can easily misunderstand the word “someone” if you know that the company also sells products to other businesses. Also, the business may want to track potential CUSTOMERs, not just those who have already bought something from the company. You can also define “something” more fully to describe whether the sale is of products, services, or some combination of the two.