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Naming Entity Views

There are two views of entity type CUSTOMER. When defining the detailed process logic for Take Order, you will need to refer to elements of each of these two views separately. However, there is no way yet to tell them apart.

CA Gen provides for these cases by allowing each entity view to have a name. Whenever detailed process logic refers to an entity view, the name takes the form:

entity-view-name entity-type-name

Entity view names always act as modifiers of the entity type name. Therefore, if the import view of CUSTOMER were named Import, the entity view would be referred to as "Import CUSTOMER" in the detailed process logic.

This combination of entity view name and entity type name must be unique for a process.

For each entity type requiring a view in a process, one view may be unnamed. As long as only one is unnamed, it is still distinguishable from other views of the same entity type.

By convention, entity action views are normally left unnamed unless there are multiple entity action views of the same entity type. This convention improves the readability of the detailed logic that appears in an action diagram.

The following table shows details of the views of the Take Order process.

Entity View

Entity Type

Entity Attribute(s)

Import

CUSTOMER

NAME

Import

PRODUCT

NUMBER

Import

ORDER ITEM

QUANTITY

Export

ORDER

NUMBER

SHIPDATE

TOTAL VALUE

(unnamed)

CUSTOMER

NAME
NUMBER

(unnamed)

ORDER

NUMBER

(unnamed)

ORDER ITEM

QUANTITY
VALUE

(unnamed)

PRODUCT

NUMBER
PRICE

The following notation of the view details is used in CA Gen:

Import View

Take Order Process

view of

IMPORT

entity

CUSTOMER

attr

NAME