Business Object Question

PEFS

Hi Aware,

I am trying to establish a way of connecting Business objects so that they will have references in the tables that refer to the object that they are a part of. I have a current setup that does not work the way I would like it to.

I am attempting to use the same Business Objects for all of the main Buisness Objects in the app.

I have the following main Business Objects:

Company
Firm
Affiliate

I would like each of these Buisness Objects to have contact related data that is structured as follows:

Contacts
Addresses
Phone Numbers
Email
Notes

Currently I have addreses, phone numbers, email and notes connected to Contacts and contacts connected to Company, Firm and Affiliate. Unfortunately, the addresses, phone numbers, emails and notes refer to the contact record and do not refer to the main Business Object (Firm, Company or Affiliate). I am concerened that it will be difficult to understand the data if I ever have a problem with numbers that are assigned to the record.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

PEFS

aware_support2

> ... I am concerened that it will be difficult to understand the data if I ever have a problem with numbers that are assigned to the record.

What kind of problems do you mean?

PEFS

I am concerned that I will have Address records that I have no way of connenting to their main Business Object.

An Example would be a Firm has a Contact Record with address and email associated with 3 separate contacts. The contact record is associated with the Firm but the address and email records are associated with the contact record.

I would like to have the ability to have multiple contacts with separate address, phone, email and history records but have them associated with the main Business object.

aware_support2

So I understand (correct me if I am wrong) that object Contact represents a person who is a member of a company. Then your design could be like this:

A Company may have many contacts, but a Contact may have one company. Attribute Company.Contacts of type Contact (multiple allowed) has matching attribute Contact.Company of type Company (multiple not allowed).
A Contact may have many addresses, but an Address is always linked to one contact. Attribute Contact.Addresses of type Address (multiple allowed) has matching attribute Address.Contact of type Contact (multiple not allowed).

With this design you can always trace an address back to the company with a simple query for a given company:

FIND Address WHERE Address.Contact.Company = Company

You can run this query, for example, on a Company form to display all addresses associated with the company through its contacts.

Generally, in Aware IM you can access/display associated objects via other associated objects (however long the chain may be) - as long as you have correctly defined reference attributes.