Anyone experience with the "party" concept

[dmontano]

I have been reading quite a bit and came across some articles by Len Silverston. Of particular interest to me was the Supertype and Subtyping of entities. It makes a lot of sense to me.

The "Party" concept touches on the fact that People and Organizations are in fact one superentity: party. And that a person can be subtyped into other entities; same for organizations. I am sure I have mauled the definition, so clarify as much as you wish.

My real goal is to actually implement this in FileMaker. Has anyone ever modeled this in FileMaker? Opinions on the Pros and Cons from those who have implemented this would be very helpful.

The "concept" is what I have a high degree of interest in and would appreciate anyone who may be able to assist me in getting the entities in place. I have no problem creating a file in basic form and tossing it back and forth here on the forum in hopes of getting the basic structure down.

I mentioned the concept is what interests me greatly. The reason for this is I see many corollaries in other areas of the solution I am working on. All of these types of supertype and subtype models I have tried to implement have stalled out as I hit a wall I can not overcome. A perfect example is Equipment. Equipment can be the Suprtype and the subtypes could be Printing Equipment, Bindery Equipment, Prepress Equipment, etc. Fenton was a tremendous help when I originally posted my "Equipment" dilemma, but some key issues were too complicated for me to grasp. I believe this is exactly what he was working on/towards when I originally asked for help.

I understand this can turn into a theoretical discussion, but I hope that it can also turn into a discussion on how to actually implement this as well.

Some people may say put it all in one table. I know that can be done, but that is not the focus. I find the concept of supertype / subtype to be profoundly logical.

Thanks for any participation!