We are at the point where the Process and Data Content from the three headed monster knows what the exchange or product is going to be.  We need to see if the Provider’s Process can provide the needed informational parts to construct the Product and the Consumer has the necessary parts for its processes.

In the OpenCDX Metadata Registry these parts are represented by Conceptual Objects.  A Conceptual object describes real-world things that are utilized by their processes and which they need to understand in order to make day to day working decisions.  Each Process step can be broken down using certain types of Conceptual Objects that include Entities, Roles and Actions.

A Process Step can be a Conceptual Object in and of itself and can be broken down as follows:

“An Entity (Person, Organization, Tangible Item, etc.), representing a specific Role (Officer, Judge, Clerk, etc.)  executes an Action (Issues, Arrests, Confines, etc.) on an Entity (Document, Person, Location, etc.) representing another specific Role (Report, Victim, Residence etc.)

In the following example diagram, a law information agency executes two process steps and a jail executes a single process.

Notice that a Person Entity could possibly play three different roles (Officer, Arrestee and Subject).  The trick is in knowing the business of the processes between the exchange partner and how roles may be related.  In this process flow example, the same Person Entity plays the role of Arrestee and Subject.  The Process and Data Content Heads for the Law Enforcement and Jail monster will be required to come to an agreement that the Subject and Arrestee Roles need to included in the Product and that these Roles have been assigned to the same Person entity.

In the next installment we will discuss how these Entities, Actions and Roles contain Elements that can tame the Data Content Heads.