中国电子商务期刊介绍.doc

1 19 中国电子商务中国电子商务 期刊简介期刊简介 一 期刊名称一 期刊名称 中国电子商务 二 刊号二 刊号 国内标准刊号 CN11 4440 F 国际标准连续出版物号 ISSN1009 4067 三 主管单位三 主管单位 国家工业与信息化部 四 主办单位四 主办单位 中国电子企业协会 五 五 办刊宗旨办刊宗旨 中国电子商务 以传播信息化理念 报道经济前沿 倡导信息创新 促进经济发展 为办刊宗旨 大力普及电子商务知识 弘扬科学精神 传播科学思想 倡导科学方法 六 刊登内容六 刊登内容 中国电子商务 是广大经济和信息化领域的管理人员 科教工作者 高校师生 信 息化技术人员发布学术文章的重要理论阵地 是获取精神陶冶 知识滋养和科技经济信息 的重要渠道 本刊主要刊登我国当前信息化有关的科技 经济 教育 管理等方面具有一 定学术和应用价值的学术文献和反映各学科 各领域的新成果 新技术 新工艺 新产品 等方面的论述文章 七 主要栏目七 主要栏目 1 经济管理研究 国际经贸 物流论坛 商业研究 物流平台 供应链管理 资本 运营 区域经济 投资分析 产业经济 网络营销 企业管理 经营管理 营销策略 品 牌战略 市场调研 人力资源 企业文化 财务审计 财经论坛 学术研究 管理科学 2 信息化研究 信息技术与安全 通讯技术 网络技术 自动识别技术与应用 电 子商务 支付与结算 供应链管理 数据库与数据库管理 案例分析 3 科技研究 科技项目 科技政策 科技成果 科学普及 技术市场 科技新品 实用科技 科学实践等 机电一体化 电气自动化 4 教育教学研究 教学研究 教育生活 课程与教学 教育信息化 职教时空 教 学园地 信息化教学等 5 工程技术研究 建筑工程 生物工程 医学工程 环境科学 矿业工程 市政建 设 水利工程 交通工程等 八 读者对象八 读者对象 经济领域和信息化领域的管理人员 科技企业科研开发人员 高等院校师生 信息化技术科研人员 社会各界关注经济发展和信息化发展的各界人士 联系方式 TEL 010 63309185 2 19 Email zgdzshangwu Some of the material presented in this article was excerpted with permission from The Data Model Resource Book A Library of Logical Data Models and Data Warehouse Designs published by John Wiley and Sons and authored by Len Silverston W H Inmon and Kent Graziano The Concept The age of the data modeler as artisan is passing Organizations can no longer afford the labor or time required for handcrafting data models from scratch In response to these constraints the age of the data modeler as engineer is dawning Engineers build new products using proven components and materials In data modeling the analogue to a component is a universal data model A universal data model is a generic or template data model that can be used as a building block to jump start development of the corporate data model logical data model or data warehouse data model Resistance to the use of universal data models is usually based on the belief that a particular organization has unique needs or the dreaded not invented here syndrome This article describes the application of universal data models to several disparate organizations It demonstrates that the same basic models with minor customization can be successfully applied in each example One Size Fits All The belief that a particular organization is unique because of its missions goals policies values functions processes and rules can be very strong After all some businesses sell to people and others sell to other organizations Some deal with products and others deal with services Each industry has its own set of business issues and each organization within an industry varies as much as the differences between the personalities of various individuals People and Organizations A subject data area that is common to most enterprises involves the people and organizations that are part of conducting business There is an important need to track the names addresses contact numbers and various relationships and interactions between the parties conducting business Enterprises need to track information about customers distributors agents and suppliers as well as the internal organizations and people within the enterprise This type of information is critical throughout all aspects of business including sales marketing customer service purchasing shipping invoicing budgeting accounting and human resources Enterprises spend significant effort and time defining the most effective ways to model this type of information The data model may lead to sub optimal solutions 3 19 if careful analysis is not conducted For example many data models depict separate entities for each type of party that exists in an enterprise There may be entities for CUSTOMER SUPPLIER INTERNAL ORGANIZATION BROKER EMPLOYEE INVESTOR and any other role that a person or organization may play in the enterprise There are problems with modeling the information this way What if a person or organization plays more than one role in the organization For instance what if an organization supplies products and or services to our organization and also buys products from us Does this mean that we maintain their name addresses contact numbers and other organizational information in both the CUSTOMER and SUPPLIER entities Under this scenario if a name or address changes the information needs to be changed in two places Furthermore does the organization play other roles such as an agent of the company or a distributor of products Each time an organization s role is modeled as a separate entity there is a potential for redundant and inconsistent information The same argument applies to people Should we have a separate EMPLOYEE entity as well as a CONTRACTOR entity What if a contractor becomes an employee of the enterprise or vice versa The person s name demographics and contact information may still be the same The only thing that has changed is the nature of the relationship between the parties It only makes sense to refer to pre defined templates or universal data models when modeling common data structures Universal data models can point out the most effective means to maintain this information and assure that subtle yet important data integrity issues are not overlooked People and Organization Information Figures 1 2 3 and 4 depict universal data models for the people and organizations involved in conducting business These data models include information concerning the relationships between each person and organization as well as their associated contact information Before beginning our discussion of these models let s clarify some data modeling conventions Entities are represented using rounded edge rectangular boxes Sub types are represented by showing boxes within the larger box For example in Figure 1 ORGANIZATION and PERSON are both represented as sub types of PARTY 4 19 The lines between entities define relationships The dashed section of each line represents that a relationship is optional For example in Figure 1 a PARTY does not necessarily have an associated PARTY DEFINITION The part of the line closest to PARTY DEFINITION is solid and this represents a mandatory relationship Therefore each PARTY DEFINITION must be associated with a related PARTY The small crossed line across the PARTY DEFINITION to PARTY relationship specifies that the key to PARTY party id is included as part of the key to PARTY DEFINITION The crows feet three small lines at the end of each relationship line denote a one to many 1 M relationship For example Each PARTY may be defined by one or more PARTY DEFINITIONs Vice versa each PARTY DEFINITION must be used to define one and only one PARTY since the line from PARTY DEFINITION to PARTY does not end with a crows foot Now let s discuss the data models Figure 1 identifies a super type named PARTY with two sub types PERSON and ORGANIZATION Information about a person or organization is maintained independent of their roles or relationships This leads to a much more stable and normalized data structure since information about various people and organizations is only stored once The same information can then be associated with each of the party s roles 5 19 The reason that PERSON and ORGANIZATION are both sub typed into a PARTY entity is that there is common information related to both people and organizations such as their credit rating credit limit address phone number fax number or e mail address Additionally organizations and people can serve in similar roles Both people and organizations may be buyers sellers members or parties to a contract Parties may be classified into various categories i e industry codes minority classifications using the PARTY DEFINITION which stores each category into which parties may belong Figure 2 depicts that each PARTY may be involved in one or more PARTY RELATIONSHIPs PARTY RELATIONSHIP is used to define the relationship between two parties An occurrence of a PARTY RELATIONSHIP may be between two organizations such as a customer relationship to an internal company The relationship may be between a person and an organization for example an employee of an internal company Finally the relationship may be between two people An example of this is the relationship between a purchasing agent and their preferred supplier representative The PARTY RELATIONSHIP TYPE defines the possible types of relationships Possible instances of PARTY RELATIONSHIP TYPE are employer employee parent subsidiary and customer customer representative The PARTY TYPE ROLE defines the two parts of the relationship For example one role of the relationship may be employer and the other role for that same relationship may be employee Finally the PARTY PRIORITY and PARTY RELATIONSHIP STATUS TYPE entities allow each PARTY RELATIONSHIP to be prioritized high medium low and defined via a status active inactive By distinguishing whether information should be associated with the PARTY or the PARTY RELATIONSHIP we can avoid data anomalies For example many data models associate a status with a PARTY This does not account for the fact that three sales representatives may have three distinct relationships with the same 6 19 party Each sales representative may want to record a different status for their relationship with the party If the status were stored with the PARTY then the sales representatives would have to override each other s information In actuality there are really three separate relationships and the status should be associated with the PARTY RELATIONSHIP Figures 3 represents address or location information about parties It shows that ADDRESS is its own entity and can be applied to many parties The PARTY ADDRESS is a cross reference or associative entity that allows each party to have many addresses home address work address and each address to have many parties an office location of many employees Each PARTY ADDRESS may have many PARTY ADDRESS ROLES and vice versa These relationships determine the purpose of the address Examples of PARTY ADDRESS ROLE include corporate headquarters sales office and warehouse 7 19 Figure 4 is a model to maintain phone numbers fax numbers cell numbers e mail addresses and all other CONTACT MECHANISMs Instead of defining these contact mechanisms as attributes this model provides flexibility in allowing as many contact mechanisms to be stored for a PARTY or PARTY LOCATION as needed The CONTACT MECHANISM TYPE entity identifies the type of mechanism such as phone fax cellular or pager The PARTY CONTACT MECHANISM is an associative entity that allows each CONTACT MECHANISM to be related to many PARTY ADDRESSes or PARTYs a shared telephone number for several consultants Conversely each PARTY or PARTY ADDRESS may be contacted via many PARTY CONTACT MECHANISMs a person or location with numerous contact mechanisms of different types The line connecting the two relationships under PARTY CONTACT MECHANISM represents an exclusive arc and states that either one of these relationships exists but not both A PARTY CONTACT MECHANISM may be either the mechanism to contact a PARTY or a PARTY ADDRESS Similar to addresses contact mechanisms may have roles Examples of PARTY CONTACT MECHANISM ROLE TYPEs include general information number sales information and customer service number After extensive analysis and consideration of many alternate data models I believe that these four universal data models represent a very effective way to model people and organizations for most enterprises Now let s take a look at how these universal data models can be applied to specific enterprises A Manufacturing Enterprise Let s consider the needs of a particular type of enterprise specifically a manufacturing firm Suppose this firm manufactures personal computers They sell their products to retail chains distributors and directly to individuals and 8 19 organizations It is important to record contact information on each distributor and the people within those organizations They need to track supplier information to indicate who provides PC components for their machines Information on their end user customers who have bought their equipment is critical They also maintain employee information as well as information about the many subsidiaries divisions and departments and their associated locations The first comments an enterprise may make about using the previously presented universal data models are Where is the customer entity Our most important information needs are about our customers We need to record their credit limit billing options and their customer status Similarly where are the entities for supplier employee distributor or internal organization Each of these business entities is characterized by very common information They all have names addresses phone numbers statuses and other contact information This leads us to the conclusion that they could be sub typed together Should we then modify the model to add the sub types CUSTOMER SUPPLIER DISTRIBUTOR INTERNAL ORGANIZATION and EMPLOYEE all within the PARTY entity An issue is that a single person or organization may be involved in more than one of these relationships For example a distributor of the manufacturer may also be a supplier of some of their PC components Again we do not want to maintain more than one occurrence of the same person or organization as this can lead to data inconsistencies 9 19 Figure 5 illustrates how the previously described universal data models can be modified to meet the information needs of our manufacturing example For simplicity reasons only a few important entities are shown in Figure 5 but all previously described entities also apply to our manufacturing firm The PARTY RELATIONSHIP is sub typed into the applicable business relationships CUSTOMER SUPPLIER DISTRIBUTOR EMPLOYEE and INTERNAL ORGANIZATION This allows each person or organization to be involved in one or more of those relationships If there are other types of relationships such as sales agents government agencies who regulate manufacturing or stockholders they can also be defined as additional PARTY RELATIONSHIP sub types The basic information about each person or organization such as their names credit rating addresses phone numbers and other contact information is associated with the PARTY The information about each relationship is stored in the PARTY RELATIONSHIP entity All sub types of PARTY RELATIONSHIP have a from date through date and comments Each PARTY RELATIONSHIP sub type may have different attributes to define that specific relationship type For example the CUSTOMER sub type has a credit limit statement day defined as the closing day for statements and statement frq defining the frequency of statements such as weekly bi monthly or monthly This model provides an extensive flexible and stable means of maintaining person and organization information for the manufacturing organization The only customization required was to add the PARTY RELATIONSHIP sub types applicable to the manufacturer A Financial Securities Company Is this model applicable to other enterprises such as a financial securities company Let s assume that this enterprise sells investment vehicles such as mutual funds stocks bonds and other investments to the general public mostly through brokers The same type of base information is needed for people and organizations in this type of company their names addresses phone numbers and information about different types of parties and relationships The difference is in the types of business relationships involved in a financial securities firm A financial securities company needs to track information about their brokers investors wholesalers the party selling to the broker employees and internal organizations 10 19 Figure 6 shows that this same universal data model can be effectively used for a financial securities company by adding the applicable PARTY RELATIONSHIP sub types and associating appropriate attributes to each type of relationship Investment goal is an attribute of INVESTOR annual quota is an attribute of the WHOLESALER that sells to the broker and the exclusive indicator and broker license number are stored for the BROKER sub type Other Enterprises By now it is hopefully evident that most enterprises can use this same model and customize it by adding sub types to represent their own party relationships Health care enterprises may have DOCTOR PATIENT INSURANCE COMPANY HMO and PPO as PARTY RELATIONSHIP sub types Universities may have STUDENT FACULTY ADMINISTRATOR GOVERNMENT AGENCY for grants and DONATOR as possible sub types In a consulting services enterprise the party relationships may be CONSULTANT CLIENT INTERNAL STAFF and DEPARTMENT Every enterprise has the same type of data structures related to people and organizations but they are applied toward different types of relationships Other Models We have only examined data models for one common aspect of business namely managing party and relationship information There are many other universal data models for maintaining information on product services orders agreements 11 19 shipments time entry invoices accounting budgeting and human resources There are also universal data models for standard data warehouse design applications such as sales analysis financial analysis and human resource analysis I have successfully assisted enterprises in applying these template models against many industries and have found that quite often 60 percent of the universal data model constructs are applicable This translates into data models of much better quality and substantial savings of time and cost Conclusion Universal data models can substantially reduce the time to complete a corporate data model logical data model or data warehouse design They can lead to higher quality designs by identifying subtleties that may be overlooked by inexperienced modelers or harried modelers who may have tight project deadlines Businesses are very unique However most businesses underlying data structures are very similar This article used specific examples to illustrate that universal data models ca