[Data-modeling] Company histories -- more fun than a barrel of dinosaurs mating

[Jeff Prucher]

After much banging of my head into the wall, I have a few proposed additions
to the company schema that (I hope) will be able to address some of the
issues people have had about representing the history of companies through
M&A, divisions, name changes, and the like.  It's a bit complex, so please
bear with me.

The biggest change is the addition of a CVT between companies and their
subsidiaries; this allows the entering of dates for the subsidiary
relationship, since subsidiaries have a tendency to be acquired, sold,
merged, and disbanded with some frequency. I've also created a model for
company divisions, which can also be merged and split, and which also have a
dated relationship with their parent company, since divisions can be
transferred between companies (as part of an M&A or just by themselves).
I've also provided a link between an acquisition and division, to allow
entering companies that are acquired and turned into divisions (as opposed
to becoming subsidiaries or being completely absorbed into the acquiring
company).

Most of the new types hang off of this one:
http://sandbox.freebase.com/type/schema/business/company_division
The other main one is the subsidiary relationship CVT:
http://sandbox.freebase.com/type/schema/business/subsidiary_relationship

Two use cases were put before me, which I think can be accurately modeled in
this revised schema.  One is from user sprocketonline, who wanted to model
the history of the engineering firm Freeman, Fox and Partners. The text
history is something like this:
Freeman Fox merged with John Taylor & Sons in 1987 to form Acer Consultants.
Acer was purchased by Welsh Water in 1993 and merged with another subsidiary
(Wallace Evans & Partners) to form Hyder Consulting (which went under a few
names). Hyder was purchased by Western Power Distribution in 2000, and
bought itself out as an independent company in 2001.  Here's how this looks
in my model; these are the links to Acer Consultants and Hyder Consulting;
everything else is one link away:
http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000008d3d94e
http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/en/hyder_consulting

The other use case is our own Jamie Taylor's pet example of an overly
complex company history, the Sperry/Burroughs merger into Unisys, and the
attendant corporate histories.  Here's some of what I'm trying to capture:. 
For Remington Rand: http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/en/remington_rand:
The foundation from a merger of three companies;
The acquisition of Eckert-Mauchly, which became the UNIVAC Division of Rand
The acquistion of Engineering Research Associates, which also became a
division of Rand

For Sperry (http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/en/sperry_corporation):
The foundation from the merger of two companies, one of which became a
subsidiary;
Many name changes;
The acquisition of Remington Rand, and the consequent merger of the UNIVAC
Division and Engineering Reasearch Associates into a new division, Sperry
UNIVAC
The merger with Burroughs to form Unisys

For Unisys (http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/en/unisys):
In addition to the aforementioned merger, the acquisition of Convergent
Technologies to form its Network Systems Division.

I think I've captured everything, but I'm not sure how easy it will be to
traverse.  Comments and suggestions are most welcome.  Note that since this
is on sandbox, the examples will self-destruct this Monday.

Jeff Prucher
Type Librarian & Ontologist
Metaweb Technologies, Inc.