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  5. Part XIV. Business rule
  6. Chapter 2. Fact Model
  7. Creating Fact Model

How to Develop a Fact Model?

Structure business knowledge with a Fact Model. In a Fact Model, terms are visualized as rectangular blocks. You can link terms up with connectors and specify the kind of relationship in between. A Fact Model is closely related to business rules. It helps you to represent rules in the form of related business terms.

A sample fact diagram
A sample Fact Model

Creating Fact Model

  1. Select Diagram > New from the application toolbar.
  2. In the New Diagram window, select Fact Model.
  3. Click Next.
  4. Enter the diagram name and description. The Location field enables you to select a model to store the diagram.
  5. Click OK.

Notations

Name Representation
 Description
Term Term
 A meaningful noun or noun phase that business participants recognize and use in communication.
Fact Type
 Fact Type
 A fact type represents the relationship between terms.
Fact Association
 Fact Association
 A fact association connects terms for visualizing the relationship in between.
Term-Fact Type Association
 Term-Fact Type Association
 By connecting a term to a fact type, it represents a u-nary fact-type that provides a simple yes or no answer to business question.
Generalization Generalization
 Represents a parent and child relationship between terms.
A list of supported notations in Fact Model

Spliting and joining binary fact

When a fact type involves more than two terms, we call it a n-ary fact type. For example, fact type worded "helpdesk answer customer's enquiry" involves three terms helpdesk, answer and enquiry. If you have already created a fact model that involves two terms and now want to add an additional one, you need to split a fact type and connect the split fact type with the new term.

  1. Split a fact type by right clicking on the fact association and selecting Split Binary Fact from the popup menu.
    Split a binary fact
    Split a binary fact
  2. Move the mouse pointer over the added term. Press on the Resource Catalog button and drag to the split fact type.
    To connect term with fact type
  3. Release the mouse button. This connects the new term with split fact type.
    Term is connected with fact type
    Term is connected with fact type
    On the contrary, you can join a split fact type by right clicking on an association and selecting Join Fact Type from the popup menu.

Related Resources

The following resources may help you to learn more about the topic discussed in this page.

 
Chapter 2. Fact Model Table of Contents Chapter 3. Decision table

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