The case that Dan describes is modeled quite often in IT: in any business 
system that deals with staff.
It is standardly modeled as a Position, being an association between Person and 
Organization; and having a Role, duration, etc.

CERIF generalizes this greatly, by modeling associations between any two core 
entities in a generic way.
They use this to describe e.g. departments (Org-Org),
positions, temporary assignments (Person-Org),
boss, supervisor, reporting lines, collaborators (Person-Person),
project leaders, staff, reviewers (Person-Project),
etc etc.

IMHO the modeling of Position as a group (singleton at any given time) is 
neither straightforward nor completely adequate.
E.g. how do you:
- record that Obama acted in his capacity of US President?
- connect the US to the position of US President?


Reply via email to