Product Data
From a data modeling perspective, Products are broken into Product Offerings, Composite Products, and Components. A Component can be a physical device, a Tariff, Options or Services that a Customer might have.
Components can have any number of Characteristics or Features that define the Component's capabilities. Components can be classified by an extensible Class and Subclass. The following examples demonstrate common types of components: Device, Tariffs, Services, and Options. Further classes can always be added to meet new product requirements.
Recursive levels of Product Data
As stated above, a top level logical distinction of a Product Offering may contain one or many Composite Products and/or one or many Components. The data model itself allows for any of these entities to be recursively nested to any number of Component levels. This means that a Component may be composed of a lower level of Components, which in turn may be composed of still lower level components. A simple example can be a Device component, for example, Modem, composed of two lower level (and mutually exclusive as a choice) Option components (Self Install versus Installation Service). The data model allows further levels of componentization (for example, the Self Install Component, might be comprised of an "IP Address Provisioning Component" and a "Service Start Component".
