The PARTY entity maintains information about the PERSON or ORGANIZATION such as name, Social Security number and demographics independent of the role(s) that the person plays.The PARTY ROLE entity maintains information associated with each role that a PERSON or ORGANIZATION plays, thus providing a more complete profile of each party by identifying all the roles played by each party. Thus, if a person is both an END-USER CUSTOMER and a CONTRACTOR (as I was in the airline example), then it is possible to see a more complete profile of the involved party. In many enterprises, employees purchase products from the enterprise and are not recognized with any special consideration, which could be frustrating. (For example, people can play the role of EMPLOYEE and BILL-TO CUSTOMER at the same time.) Similarly, when evaluating vendor proposals, it may be important to know if one of the organizations that is a SUPPLIER also plays a role as a CUSTOMER, even if it is in another division of the enterprise.
While the PARTY and PARTY ROLE entities maintain information about a single person or organization, the PARTY RELATIONSHIP entity maintains information about two parties within the context of their relationship. This data structure provides the capability to view an integrated profile of all the relationships in which a party is involved. For example, knowing that an organization has a PARTNERSHIP relationship with a part of the enterprise may be important to know when forming an ORG-CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP (customer relationship between organizations) with another part of the enterprise. Other information related to PARTY RELATIONSHIP is the RELATIONSHIP STATUS (active, inactive, dead, etc.) and the PRIORITY TYPE (high, medium or low).
The EVENT maintains information about any activities, which may occur within the context of relationships. Events may be COMMUNICATION EVENTS such as phone calls, meetings and other contact events, as well as TRANSACTION EVENTS such as orders, shipments, payments and other business transactions. The EVENT ROLE maintains the type of role that each party plays in the event.
SOURCE: dmreview.com/article_sub.cfm?articleId=4820
