Building Proper Relationships for B2B

[Robert Campbell]

This is piggybacking off a previous thread I started in determining best practices for relationships. In this example I'd like to use the use case of Application M needs data from Application C. The actual data flow is C -> E -> G -> I -> K -> M. 

My thought is (for this scenarios)

• C	depends on::used by	E
  C	depends on::used by	G
  C	depends on::used by	I
  C	depends on::used by	K
  C	sends data to::receives data from	M
  M	depends on::used by	K
  M	depends on::used by	I
  M	depends on::used by	G
  M	depends on::used by	E

My thought process behind that is E, G, I & K only gets the data to pass it on. Thinking data flow, it's still a sends data to::receives data from for all those where I have depends on::used by but it's more of a dependency that these applications are functioning so the data can get to where it belongs.

However, what happens when C has some other data that it actually needs to send to G? Does it have two relationships or do you change the depends on to sends data to?  If you "properly" put both relationships, how would you know which is for which and does it matter?

I haven't used event management but I'm guessing from what I've read that the "depends on::used by" will impact that. If that is the case, maybe we should always use depends on::used by when defining B2B relationships. In the example, all things need to be working or the [new] data won't be there for the next step to get it and move it along.

We are currently only able to handle this at the application service level. My thought is with business services, we would be able to better break down those relationships if needed but since an application service will likely support many business service offerings, without those offerings, it makes the relationships more complicated.