Tom Wetmore wrote: > The term "persona" was popularized by the GenTech model, but that model is so hard to understand (because it is a fully normalized relational model, where the normalization completely obfuscates the underlying data model), that it has gone no where. Actually, I think the layout of the GenTech model is largely what obfuscates it. Redrawing to fit the work-flow would help. However it is an ER model in an increasingly OO world and I think an OO approach would be better. "Simple" concepts such as names are really only simple in a particular cultural setting; forename/surname is only one possible naming system. An OO approach would allow for a base class of "Name" which could be used as a place-holder wherever a name is required in the data model but implemented by an appropriate sub-class where a name is required in real data. The trouble is that what we have in current S/W seems to have been put together to help those who had done extensive paper research to write it up and not to help in that research in the first place. ISTM that if you start by considering the research process you automatically come up with something which is quite like the GenTech for the simple reason that that's the way the data really is. Certainly my own initial musings, way before I encountered the GenTech model, were very much along the lines of a subset of it - right down to the name "Persona" which again is a pretty obvious one; they're the /Dramatis personae/ who play the roles in the events. -- Ian The Hotmail address is my spam-bin. Real mail address is iang at austonley org uk