Modeling of entity life cycle

Almost every entity in a system has a life cycle, either explicit or implicit.



Usually the life cycle is implemented as a status column, with a domain and elements. It is not directly obvious though, which column implements the life cycle, which states are possible and which database values mean that an instance of the entity is active, for example. It happens that related entities have inconsistent statuses. Those discrepancies can be resolved in code, but add complexity and make it hard to understand what happens in the application.



I propose a standard tab in the data model viewer that allows to describe the life cycle of an entity. Building on that, layout, default and context functionality can be modeled because the SF now has knowledge of which column implements the life cycle.



Besides that, the business process modeler can use this information to define which process applies to which part of the life cycle. In the process flow designer it can be used to model, rather than program, conditional steps.