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

[Benjamin Goldenberg]

Hey Bryan,

I'm just finishing up a script to cleanup some conflated retail  
locations and business chains. Here's an example of a problematic topic:

http://www.freebase.com/view/en/village_inn

When were you thinking of making this change. I would like to run my  
script before you make these changes, so I don't have to rewrite the  
script. Let me know what your plans are.

Ben


On Jun 26, 2008, at 10:28 AM, Bryan Cheung wrote:

> 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
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