Models - accessing data across models

Question

Hi

I have one question about Models.

I understand that you cannot access entities between models, that is, if I have one model called "Vendor" and then another called "Item", and in those models I have entites with the same names as the models.

Now I would like to be able to connect a "Vendor" to an "Item", but since I have that in different models I cannot.

If I have those two entities in the same model, I can have a "vendor" attribute in the "item" entity and connect them together that way. But then I will screw up the versioning since i'd like to control the "vendor" and the "item" differently (so if there are some things in "item" that don't validate i cannot create a new version for "vendor")

What would you suggest to be a best practise for this? I'd like to have "vendor" and "item" in different models to be able to control the versioning of both models, but I feel restricted by this..

Answer 1

Essentially, you should have one model serve as the owner/publisher of data (edit data here) and another model serve as the subscriber (use and link to the members as 'reference data').  You could create a process to stage records from publisher to subscriber on a periodic basis.  We have seen this as an enhancement request.

Answer 2

Ok ..

Just to make sure I'm understanding you correctly

Are you are suggesting that I have the "item" model, and then the "vendor" model. Then in the "item" model I have a vendor entity.
I control all the vendors in the "vendor" model, edit them there, and then I synchronise that with the vendor entity in the "item" model, so i can connect the correct vendors to the items...?

Or am I way off there? :-)

Answer 3

Hi Val

This is definitely something that needs to be included in a future version.  My customer has a scenario where three seperate models need access to a shared entity (currency in this case).  I really don't wan't to have to create three seperate processes when simply allowing a domain attribute to be from a different model would solve it very simply.

How about starting a "sticky" thread on this forum for enhancement requests?

Thanks

Tim

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