Choose a name for an entity, relationship or attribute

The naming of entities, relationships and attributes is an important consideration when creating a rulebase.

What do you want to do?

Choose a name for an entity

Choose a name for a relationship

Choose attribute text

Document the naming convention for a project

Choose a name for an entity

Entities should be named using the definite article 'the', as in 'the family', 'the child', 'the friend', 'the school' etc.

Choose a name for a relationship

When creating a relationship you should give the relationship a meaningful name. Remember that the relationship describes the reference from one entity instance to one or more of another entity instance. The relationship name should therefore include the target entity text so that it is clear from the relationship name who the relationship is to.

The name of the relationship should reflect the everyday expression used to describe the relationship (if there is one), and should be clear in and out of context what is being referred to. Try to consider that nature of the relationship you are capturing and give it a name that represents this relationship.

Where you are referring to a single instance ("to-one" relationships), your relationship text must therefore be singular. When you are referring to multiple instances ("to-many" relationships), your relationship text must be plural. Where one entity is the global entity, you may simply refer to the target entity.

Examples of relationship names

Relationship type Entity 1 Entity 2 Relationship text
One-to-one "the child" "the friend" "the child's best friend"
Many-to-one "the child" "the family" "the child's family"
One-to-many "the family" "the child" "the children"
Many-to-many "the child" "the friend" "the child's friends"
Self-referential one-to-one "the child" "the child" "the child's twin"

Choose attribute text

Selecting correct attribute wording is fundamental to capturing logic accurately in your Oracle Policy Modeling application and conveying information to a user in a meaningful way. Specifically, attribute text influences:

Choose boolean attribute text

The following general principles apply to the writing of Oracle Policy Modeling boolean attributes (statements).

1. Statements should be complete grammatical sentences
2. Statements should generally be written in the past tense
3. Statements should be written in the third person
4. Statements must be able to be negated
5. Statements should represent a single concept
6. Statements should not use contractions
7. Statements should make sense without reference to another statement
8. Statements should be kept simple but explicit
9. Statements should indicate entity membership
10. Statements should not use personal pronouns
11. Statements which refer to amounts should indicate the unit of measurement

See also:

Choose non-boolean attribute text

When creating non-boolean attributes (variables) the following guidelines apply:

1. Variables need to start with the definite article 'the'
2. Variables should indicate entity membership
3. Variables which refer to amounts should indicate the unit of measurement
4. Variables should reference their source

Document the naming convention for a project

A Rulebase Naming Conventions document should be created at the start of every Oracle Policy Modeling project to clearly set out a consistent method of wording statements and variables. This is critical because automatic linking will only work when statements and variables are an exact text match. If different rule developers use different text when creating separate chunks of rules the attributes will not tie together. The Rulebase Naming Conventions document should define which nouns will be capitalized and whether particular acronyms should be used.

The Rulebase Naming Conventions document can be kept in the Oracle Policy Modeling project under Documents/Design.