Black Suit Software services rely on a core engine which drives both the rapid software prototyping process as well as the final product. Three ideas constitute the core key concepts, which build the entity relationship model:
The Entity-Action Concept
Like every entity-model concept, the Black Suit Software entity-action concept is based on the fact that all data can be structured the same way. Of course, entities have attributes which distinguish them; but it is the action bound to the entity that is the key to our idea. The action defines what can be done with the instances of an entity and at the same time represents the hook for the other two concepts of Black Suit Software: the finite state machine and the automated task delegation.
The Finite State Machine
Together with a construct called “state”, actions can build work flows. An action that transforms an instance of an entity from one state into another is called “transition”. Just like actions themselves, states are bound to their entities. All work flows within the system are finite state machines, which means, every document is held in a defined state at any time.
Automated Task Delegation
Every action is not only bound to its entity but can also be added to an “agenda”. Unlike traditional access control list models, agendas do not grant or revoke access privileges to the data, but rather define tasks in the form of actions for operations that have to be performed by the user working with the system. More than that, there is another link to actions: Whenever one entity has a reference to another entity, the action can be bound to that referenced entity. The way agendas are assigned to the users of the system facilitates that entity-action binding to guarantee an automated workload balance within extremely large systems.These three concepts are the pillars of the Black Suit Software meta-concept, which, along with numerous smaller but no less important features, allow for the implementation of any business process within company hierarchies on all scales.
