The following figure shows our starting point for the model, based on [Fowler-AP], and shows a Party representing an Individual or Organization. <br/>In this model, both organization and organization unit (e.g. consortium, parent company, subsidiary, division, department, branch or team) are represented by the Organization entity.<br/>Organization can also represent government agencies, clubs, societies, charities and educational & religious organizations.<br/>Whilst Party is not a term often used in the business, the concept of “a person or a company” is often heard, and the Party abstraction makes the domain model easier to understand. <br/>Stephen Palmer [Coad Letter] uses the definition that “A party is a legal entity, something or someone that can be sued in a court of law”. But in SID, an Organization might be "not a legal entity" as long as it is of interest for the company to know it.<br/>An Organization might be composite or atomic.<br/>AtomicOrganization is a type of Organization that does not have any subordinate Organization. That is, an AtomicOrganization is a leaf-level Organization. <br/>CompositeOrganizaiton is a type of Organization that is formed by aggregating other Organizations, which may be atomic or composite Organizations. <br/>The OrganizationDecompositionComponent specifies the valid period for the relationship between CompositeOrganization and Organization and relates to the OrganizationDecompositionType.<br/>OrganizationDecompostionType describes and specifies certain type of organization decomposition such as geographical, hierarchical and financial.<br/>
