Sometimes it is necessary to account for the time dimension of a business partner role. For example, an existing entity may have assumed a supplier role from 2010 to 2020. However, the same supplier may sign a new contract to resume the role of a supplier from 2023 to 2026. The general recommendation for modeling a time dimension is to manage it as an extension to the recommended data model.
Business partner roles with a time dimension are modeled as data containers with Start Date and End Date attributes. This contrasts the previous recommendation of modeling such roles as separate entities since the start and end date values are different from one legal entity to another.
Furthermore, it is not recommended to use flat attributes since the number of business partner roles are dynamic for each legal entity. It is not a scalable approach to create a new set of role-specific attributes each time a role is added.