WesternIM’s AgileIM provides a powerful tool for modeling data in an organization’s environment. Software targeted at a specific vertical market often provides data objects that are optimized for the general needs of that market. This often means that an organization must choose between using software that is a poor match to their particular requirements, or changing their business processes to more accurately match the general case. With AgileIM, organizations can easily create data models that accurately match their particular requirements, making processes more efficient and reducing learning curves.
AgileIM’s data modeling features are accessed through the Object Type Editor. The Object Type Editor allows creation of new types, and assignment of attributes or metadata to those types. Each repository can be configured with a set of default attributes that are assigned to all new types, ensuring consistency across the repository.
Beyond simple type creation and assignment of attributes, the Object Type Editor allows the creation of relationships between types. These are not restricted to being simple one-to-one relationships, but can be one-to-many or many-to-many. For example, if an organization has an object type representing properties, and another object type representing owners, a single owner may own multiple properties, and a single property might have multiple co-owners. There can be multiple links to or from one type. For example, the properties might also be linked to zoning bylaws or code violations. In this way the data model can be as complex or as simple as necessary.
The relationship between objects is an actual link and not just an assignment of an attribute with a name. In the above example, a user can follow the link from a property to its owner, and then see all of the properties belonging to that owner. The user could then follow the links to those properties, and determine the zone to which the property is assigned, or if there are any code violations.
In order to facilitate the display of these relationships, the Object Type Editor has a Form Editor to create display configurations appropriate to the object type. The form can display as many or as few of the attributes as needed, and can also control the display of relationships between types. The control of types and forms allows for the configuration of the user interface (UI) to be optimized for the particular business processes of the organization.
Additional customization of the UI is provided through the Tab Editor. In AgileIM, a Tab is used to make a particular view of the data available to users. The Tab can be configured to display only certain object types, or types with attributes set a particular way. The Tab can also be configured to display relationships in a hierarchical manner, facilitating “drilling down” through relationships to discover particular information. For example, one Tab could be configured to arrange the data in a hierarchy of Owner/Property/Zone, where a different Tab could be configured to arrange the same data in a hierarchy of Code Violation/Property/Owner. Each Tab facilitates a different view of the data, allowing many different user types to access the same data in a way relevant to that particular user.
AgileIM provides an effective and powerful way to represent your organization’s data that facilitates its use in a way that makes sense to your users. Objects can have attributes that are relevant in the context of your organization. Multiple objects can be related in ways that make it easy for users to transit the relationships, making connections obvious and intuitive. Different users can see the same data in different ways, improving usability and reducing learning curves. Accurate modeling of your business data can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your business operations. AgileIM makes accurate data modeling available to all organizations.