Roles, their modeling in IP

    The task and its solution


    Let there be users of the information system. Authorized users are allowed to build their models in this IP. Unauthorized people can only watch how others build these models, but they themselves can not do it.
    Question: How many roles are in IP?

    Let there be two piles of sand dumped side by side.
    Question: Is it one heap, or is it still two heaps, but now piled nearby?

    Let there be a post of the director of school No. 123. Sidorov takes this post after Ivanov.
    Question: are these two different directors, or one director?

    Today Ivanov plays the role of Princess Mary.
    Question: tomorrow, when he will play a role with the same name, will it be the same role, or another?
    Question:Sidorov, who today plays a role with the same name, plays the same role, or another?

    There is a clock mechanism that acts as a clock drive in the clock on the city tower. Let it break and be replaced with another clockwork.
    Question: is the clock drive different now, or is it the same clock drive, but with a different clockwork?

    All these questions (and similar ones) can be answered in the same way - everyone decides for himself how convenient it is, based on the context. This, usually, does not bother anyone, because you do not need to build models. As an analyst, I have to be constantly on the alert. It is necessary to understand how the client sees the subject area in order to correctly build the model. Today I want to show you the sequence of reasoning, which I do with it.

    Decision explanation


    Let there be a director of school No. 123 Sidorov. Question: is this the same role as the director of school No. 123 Ivanov? First you need to understand for whom the information system is built?

    Let it be built to collect statistical reporting on zp school principals. For this reporting, all directors are faceless. There is no difference Ivanov or Sidorov occupy a position, but it is important to distinguish between the directors of different schools. It is clear that from this point of view, the role of the principal is one.

    Now let's say that IP is built to analyze the performance of various school principals. In such an IP, it will be important to distinguish between Ivanov as a director and Sidorov as a director. From this point of view, the roles of directors will be different.

    In order to understand how to move from the first presentation to the second, you need to understand what a role is. I wrote about this in detail in the article Modeling accounting objects . Let me remind you thesis. A role is a certain 4-dimensional volume of space-time occupied at different times by different people, or rather their temporal parts. This means that the role can be represented in the form of a construction consisting of the temporal parts of people, each of which is characterized by the start date and the end date of its participation. The role itself is not the multitude of these temporal parts, but the gluing together of all these parts.

    The concept of gluing must be explained in detail. As well as the concept of separation. If we take four legs and a tabletop, then by combining them together we get a table. Looking at the place that the table occupies, we can switch our attention, at different times seeing 4 legs and a table top, then the whole table. Gluing is such a process of perception, thanks to which we can imagine a lot as a whole. Separation is such a process of perception, thanks to which we can present the whole as much. Our consciousness is capable of both separating and gluing. But we are not always aware of these processes.

    Imagine that you have several piles of sand. You connected them together and got one heap. Similarly, gluing of temporal parts occurs. You take them and glue them together. Of the many small temporal parts, you get one larger temporal part. Thus, to obtain the role of the director of school No. 123, it is necessary to glue the temporal parts: the role of the director of school No. 123, performed by Ivanov, and the role of the director of school No. 123, performed by Sidorov.

    If heaps of sand can be joined, then one heap can be divided into parts. By analogy, the role can be divided into parts. Let there be the role of the director of the school, performed by Sidorov. Let’s imagine it in the form of many roles, each of which is Sidorov’s daily role as director from 8-00 when he comes to work, until 17-00 when he leaves. We can say that the role of the director of the school, performed by Sidorov, is a gluing together of all the daily roles of Sidorov.

    Let there be many daily roles performed by Sidorov. As we can see, these roles can be glued together and get one big role. They can be stacked and see what they have in common - to create a typical daily role. You can do a statistical analysis of these daily roles. In this case, it is important to understand what objects we work with and what attributes are used. If the question is about the duration of Sidorov’s work as a director, then we are talking about gluing daily roles into one big role, and this duration is a property of this role. If the question is when USUALLY Sidorov comes to work, then we are talking about the typical daily role of Sidorov, and this time is a property of the typical daily role. If there is a question about what time AVERAGE Sidorov comes to work, we are talking about a lot of daily roles and this time is a property of many daily roles. Therefore, if we want to correctly transfer these properties to the IS, we need to create all the objects listed by me in the IS: daily roles, a large role glued together, a typical role, many roles. It should be remembered that the set in the IP is a separate object with its own attributes, and not just a bunch of roles.

    You can glue the roles of all the directors of all schools, and at the same time get such a huge role - the director of the school, which will be performed by different people at the same time in different places. Therefore, the role is not necessarily performed by one person at a time. The role can be performed by different people at the same time in different places. At the same time, this huge role should not be confused with the typical role of a school principal! This confusion is quite common. In addition, a typical role is often given out as a role.

    The question I started the post with is that there are authorized users and there are unauthorized users. Question: How many roles are in this IP?

    I hope now the answer is clear: as many as you like. You can call the role of user participation in each session. You can glue all sessions related to one account, and define a role for this gluing, you can glue all sessions of authorized users and define a role for this gluing. It is possible to glue all sessions and to determine the role for this glue - this will be the gluing of authorized and unauthorized users. And you can glue work sessions in this program with work sessions in other programs. Etc. and whatever. The question of expediency. It all depends on the goals of our accounting: the constructed model must satisfy the goals of our work.

    The nature of roles and physical objects


    After our conversation, the impression remains that the role is something ephemeral - gluing, cutting. But in fact, the role has the same nature as any other physical object. The fact that we get the role by cutting space-time, or gluing it together, does not make the role something different from any other physical object. Imagine a world in which people are aware of the transmigration of souls from one body to another. However, they not only know this, they have passports brought to the souls, and not to the bodies. They often say - I, as Ivanov, had a great rest, or I, as Sidorov, did a poor job of my karma. And what you see as an object, they perceive as a role.

    Physical objects can also be glued and cut to receive new objects. For example, a plank plus a plank is a bench. Or the table can be cut into countertops and legs. Or the matter in the solar system can be divided into a gas-dust cloud remaining after a supernova explosion and a planetary system that arose later from this cloud.

    As a result, you can understand that everything around us is nothing more than the result of our interpretation of the real and incomprehensible world. And the fact that our consciousness distinguishes the physical world as reality and the world of roles — as imagined by us — is nothing more than egocentrism, similar to the anthropocentrism of the Ptolemy system.

    An explanation of how objects appear in our minds I made in the article The Origin of Accounting Objects

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