Issue 3026: The Node class issue(s) (partyman-fac-rtf)
Source: Gazebo Software Solutions (Mr. Robert Mickley, )
Nature: Uncategorized Issue
Severity: 
Summary: The Node class is currently derived from CommonObject.  This class is a base
class for Party and supports interfaces for parties to ask about the roles
they are involved in.  There are two issues with this design.  The first
issue is that these interfaces are not supported by PartyRole or
PartyRelationship.  This has the effect of not allowing PartyRoles to have
Roles.  As an example, an employee is a role a person plays in its
relationship with a company.  A manager is role an employee plays in
relation to it's department.  This would be a role of a role.  To support
this, the PartyRole (and the PartyRelationship as well) should have the Node
interfaces available as well.

Resolution: 
Revised Text: 
Actions taken:
November 12, 1999: received issue
Discussion: 

End of Annotations:=====
Issue:
The Node class is currently derived from CommonObject.  This class is
a base
class for Party and supports interfaces for parties to ask about the
roles
they are involved in.  There are two issues with this design.  The
first
issue is that these interfaces are not supported by PartyRole or
PartyRelationship.  This has the effect of not allowing PartyRoles to
have
Roles.  As an example, an employee is a role a person plays in its
relationship with a company.  A manager is role an employee plays in
relation to it's department.  This would be a role of a role.  To
support
this, the PartyRole (and the PartyRelationship as well) should have
the Node
interfaces available as well.

Suggested Action:
Break out the Node interface into an independent mix-in class.  Party
will
use multiple inheritance to get CommonObject and the Node interface.
This
will create no functional differences for Party.  Then, mulitply
derive Role
from CommonContainer as well as Node.  This allows PartyRole and
PartyRelationship to support roles.

If this change is made, there will need to be some small interface
chances
to a couple of the interfaces of Role.  For example, how does the
get_primary_object interface react when a role of a role is modeled.
Some
changes will need to be made to make sure the specification is clear
for
things like that.