Functions are groupings of activities that deal with the major areas of interest to a business. They are broad business activities that take place continuously.
In our XYZ Health Clinic example, there were at least two natural areas of interest to our business, Care Providers and Patients. Therefore, we have two corresponding functions—Care Provider Management and Patient Care—in which we can group all of the business activities pertaining to each area of interest.
In the Entity Subtypes section, we contemplated sub-typing the Care Provider entity type into the sub-types Doctor and Nurse. One of the conditions for sub-typing calls for different business activities for each subtype. If we needed to sub-type Care Provider into Doctor and Nurse, we would want to decompose Care Provider Management into lower-level functions covering each sub-type to contain those specific activities associated with each.
Examining the XYZ Health Clinic Data Model and Activity Model, you should begin to see some parallels between the two. In fact, this concept is known as parallel decomposition. The lowest-level functions should correspond with the lowest level subject areas or, in some cases, subtypes.
There are different techniques for activity decomposition, including:
Generally used for the first level of decomposition, not demonstrated here
Demonstrated with the previous Care Provider specialization
Used for the first level processes discussed next
Lower-level processes used, if necessary, to move an entity from one life cycle state to the next.
Given this brief introduction to Parallel Decomposition, what functions would exist beneath the eGolf Services root function?
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