[Data-modeling] Proposed change to the relationship of retail locations to companies

[Bryan Cheung]

A couple of users have spoke up about the difficulty of modeling  
business locations of a company.

Currently, there is no way to model a company's business locations.   
The closest analogy we have is the method to model businesses that are  
retail locations or business chains that have retail locations.

The way to model a company that is a retail location is to co-type the  
company as a retail location. To model a company that is has multiple  
locations, the company is instead co-typed as a business chain and  
then the retail locations are added to the business chain retail  
locations property. However, this is then asserting that any company  
with more than 1 location is a business chain, which may not  
necessarily be true.

This model works fine for things like coffee chains (Starbucks), but  
not so well for local stores that may have more than one location (a  
doctor with 2 offices).

It's been proposed that these schema changes be made:

1. Rename the type retail location to business location (and update  
the key to reflect this new name)
2. Move the property retail locations off of business chain and put it  
on company (and also rename it to business locations)
3. Delete the business chain type.

For companies with only one business location, e.g. the local liquor  
store or flower shop, the topic should be typed as a company and as a  
buisness location itself.

Comments? Objections?

Bryan