I am new to both data vault modelling and this group. I work for a non profit organization which collects donations from patrons. To give a simple summarized version of it, we have a person/org table from source (which has all the donors), we have a pledge table with pledge number where each record is a pledge taken by the donors to donate certain amount and then we have a gift table where each record is a gift given by a donor. Not all pledges convert to gifts and sometimes one pledge can have multiple gift records (with same gift receipt number + sequence number) summing up to the total pledge amount. On the other hand there can also be gifts that do not belong to any pledge. The business people identify a gift by its gift receipt number even though its a system generated transaction id and obviously it has its own attributes.
Now I am trying to model this in DV2.0. Person/Org table looks like it should be modelled as a hub. I think pledge can also be a hub but coming to gift, how should I model it, since business identifies it with a number, shall I model it as a hub and a MASat (one gift receipt number with multiple sequence ids) with the details or since gift is a transaction model it as a link and MASat with the low grain details.
hubs represent the business objects of the business, should persons and orgs be in the same hub?
is pledge a business object?
I only ask because a DV is meant to represent the business which is why it is advocated to be so flexible, in other words if the data source / business needs change you can easily add to the existing model and “turn off” the feed for historical loads, in that sense pledge hub might be extraneous no one cares about, is not a unique business key and/or can be modelled simply as a sat off the hub person/org hub
Thank you for a quick response, I really appreciate it.
Regarding the separation of Person and Org, I thought of it more like one hub but 2 different Satellites, as the Org entity has far less attributes than a person entity. Please tell me as to what is the advantage of separating them into 2 different hubs?
Coming to Pledge data, my business people identify a pledge also in their world; it has a unique key which is pledge number; its more than a promise and binds the donor legally. There are also some reports surrounding it for example donors that are overdue on their pledges. That’s why I am modelling it as a hub.
I request your attention on the gift side of the things. On the surface it looks like a transaction and making me think to make a link out of it but 1) I do not see any other hubs that I can link it to. 2) The business world identifies it and instead of pushing all the gift details to Multi active link Satellite, I would like to keep it at the Multi active Satellite at the Gift hub, as it is easy to access that data with out any joins. Please guide me.
It’s between you and the business sme; would keys clash? I worked at a customer where “user” was defined as business object — I learnt that that was in fact a business object that crossed business capabilities with the same key and core their business model.
Sounds good
As for your third scenario, consider:
is the “transaction” describing an interaction between business entities or not? It’s a satellite for sure but whether it hangs off a link or a hub is the question.
an msat is about a SET of changes, I don’t think transaction data qualifies, it could possibly be a satellite with a dependent-child key instead.
if you choose to use a link-sat as sat-with-dep-key that is also fine
