Artifact: Business Entity
 Business Entity |
A business entity is class that is passive; that is, it does not initiate interactions on its own. A business entity object may participate in many different business use-case realizations and usually outlives any single interaction. In business modeling entities represent objects that business workers access, inspect, manipulate, produce, and so on. Business entity objects provide the basis for sharing among business workers participating in different business use-case realizations. |
| UML representation: | Class, stereotyped as «business entity». |
| Worker: | Business Designer |
| Optionality: | Can be excluded. |
| Sample Reports: | Business Entity Report |
| More information: | Guideline: Business Entity |
Purpose 
The following workers use the business entity:
- The business designer describes it to explain a "thing" or product in the business.
- A system analyst uses the business entities as input when describing system use cases.
- The designer uses business entities as input for identifying entities in the design model.
Properties
| Property Name | Brief Description | UML Representation |
| Name | The name of the business entity. | The attribute "Name" on model element. |
| Brief Description | A brief description of the role and purpose of the business entity. | Tagged value, of type "short text". |
| Responsibilities | A survey of the responsibilities defined by the business entity. This may include the entity’s lifecycle, from being instantiated and populated until the job is finished. | A (predefined) tagged value on the superclass "Type". |
| Relationships | The relationships, such as generalizations, associations, and aggregations, in which the business entity participates. | Owned by an enclosing package, via the aggregation "owns". |
| Operations | The operations defined by the business entity. | Owned by the superclass "Type" via the aggregation "members". |
| Attributes | The attributes defined by the business entity. | - " - |
| Diagrams | Any diagrams local to the business entity, such as interaction diagrams or state diagrams. | Owned by an enclosing package, via the aggregation "owns". |
Timing
Business entities are created mainly during inception and early elaboration.
Responsibility
A business designer is responsible for the integrity of the business entity, ensuring that:
- The name and brief description are explanatory.
- The responsibilities are correctly described.
- The business entity has the appropriate relationships, attributes, and operations defined to fulfill its responsibilities.
Tailoring
If you are not combining business and system models, you can use the stereotype name «entity» instead of «business entity».
If you are doing domain modeling, meaning that you identify business entities only, you can use the stereotype «domain class» instead of «business entity».
