Stardust provides support for Business Objects. Please refer to chapter Business Objects Business Objects of the Concepts handbook Concepts Handbook in the Stardust Documentation for details on Business Objects used in Stardust.
Each structured data has a Business Object Management properties tab to support configuring the data as a Business Object.
To enable a structured data to be used as Business Object:
To set a primary key field, select an element from the referenced structured type in the Primary Key Field drop-down list.
Figure: Selecting a Primary Key Field
The list contains data from the referenced Structured Type that meet all of the following criteria:
The Primary Key should be the data that makes the Business Object unique.
The content of the drop-down list for the Name Field list is the same as for the Primary Key Field drop-down list. The selected name field is used as label for Instances of the Business Object.
Figure: Selecting a Name Field
The selected name is for example displayed in tooltips.
Relationships between the in-scope Business Object and another Business Object can be defined in the Object Relationships section. For each relationship, you should define the references for the relationship and labels for these references.
Click Add to create a new relationship. Entry fields appear in the Object Relationships table.
Define the following properties in the table:




Read Data Values and Modify Data Values permissions should be propagated to the related
Business Object instances. For details on the effect of this option, please refer to section
Visibility Restrictions of Business Object Instances depending on Department Grants
of chapter
Business Objects
in the
Concepts handbook.
Visibility Restrictions of Business Object Instances depending on Department Grants of chapter
Business Objects in the
Concepts Handbook of the Stardust Documentation.
The following relationship rules apply:
The following examples demonstrate standard and recursive relationships.
For the concepts of these two kind of relationships, please refer to section Creating Business Object Relationships Creating Business Object Relationships of chapter Business Objects Business Objects in the Concepts handbook. Concepts Handbook of the Stardust Documentation.
In this example, we establish a relationship between two Business Objects Vendor and Product.
The Structured Data Type for data Product contains the fields
with cardinality Exactly One.

Figure: Structured Data Type for Product
It is specified as Business Object with primary key ProductID and name field ProductName.

Figure: Business Object Definition for Product Data
The Structured Data Type for data Vendor contains the fields
Exactly OneExactly OneZero or more
Figure: Structured Data Type for Vendor
It is specified as Business Object with primary key VendorID and name field VendorName.

Figure: Business Object Definition for Vendor Data
Now we set up a relationship between these two Business Objects. For the Vendor Business Object we set the following:

Products as label for this reference.
Vendor as label for the reference
from the Product Business Object to the in-scope Vendor
Business Object.
The established relationship now looks similar as in the following screenshot:

Figure: Standard Example for Business Object Relationship
The ProductIDs field in the Vendor Business Object references the ProductID field (the primary key) in the Product Business Object. The label for this reference is Products.
The reciprocal relationship is established automatically for the Product Business Object. Open the Data properties view for the Product data and switch to the Business Object Management tab. You see the relationship is set up for the Product Business Object in the following way:

Figure: Reciprocal Relationship
The VendorID field in the Product Business Object references the VendorID field (the primary key) in the Vendor Business Object. The label for this reference is Vendor.
Now we establish a recursive relationship for a Business Object Employee.
The Structured Data Type for data Employee contains the fields
with cardinality Exactly One.

Figure: Structured Data Type for Employee
It is specified as Business Object with primary key EmployeeID and name field EmployeeName.

Figure: Business Object Definition for Employee Data
To set up a recursive relationship, we enter the following settings for the Employee Business Object:

Manager as label for this reference
Reports as label for the reference
from the other Employee Business Object to this
Employee Business Object
The established recursive relationship now looks similar as in the following screenshot:

Figure: Recursive Business Object Relationship Example
In one direction, the ManagerID field references the EmployeeID field as the primary key of Business Object Employee. The label for this reference is Manager.
In the other direction, the ManagerID field references the EmployeeID field as the primary key of the other Business Object instance and the label for this reference is Reports.
Business Objects can be configured to automatically spawn departments for those Organizations that use the Business Object Primary Key as a department variable. A new department will be spawned whenever a unique Primary Key value is saved for its Business Object Instances.
To specify auto-department generation, select one or more Organizations from the multi-select box. The multi-select box contains all Organizations that support departments using the in-scope Business Object.
The Primary Key of the current Business Object becomes the Department Parameter.
Figure: Automatic Department creation
On Department creation, the Business Object's primary key is the Department ID, and the Business Object's Name is the Department Name.
Note
Please take care when modifying Business Object Instances that are configured for Automatic
Department Generation!
Modifying the Primary Key value will result in a new Department being created.
Modifying the Name Field value will result in the existing Department being renamed to
reflect the new name.
For example, suppose the Fund Business Object's Primary Key is FundId. A department Fund Processing uses the Fund data with its Primary Key as data path as department variable.

Figure: Fund Processing Department Properties
The Fund Business Object is configured for Automatic Department Generation for this Organization.

Figure: Configure Business Object for Automatic Department Generation
A new Business Object Instance is created with FundId = EQTF9.

Figure: Create Business Object Instance
As a result, a new EQTF9 Department will be created for the Fund Processing Organization.

Figure: Automatically created Department
Changing the structured data type of Business Object data in already deployed models is supported for the following operations:
The following operations are not supported or restricted to described scenarios:
Changing the name of the Primary Key field is not supported.
Changing the name of a Referenced Object(s) field, which is used as foreign key, is not supported.
Renaming a field is equivalent with deleting the field and creating a new one. All the data in the field will be lost! As a workaround for changing field names you could do the following:
Changing the type of a field in the corresponding structured data type is supported only in scenarios where type conversion is possible.
It is supported to change a single object field to a list, but not the other way around.