The fundamental idea behind a business object is that it should closely match the end user's conception of an object (e.g.; the specific information used to define a customer). This is in marked contrast to an application developer's notion of an object (e.g.; the normalized database tables used to capture generic person information). The business object configuration tool described here is a bridge between the two notions; a business object maps the end user's concept of an object to the physical database structures, and services, used to maintain the information. In other words, a business object is typically a simplification of the maintenance object.
Another definition of a business object is a structure that allows an implementation to define a simpler view of a maintenance object. For example, a tax management COTS team can set up business objects for individual taxpayer, corporation, and partnership all as simpler views of the Person maintenance object. Yet another use of business objects is for managing market messages: separate business objects can be defined for a multitude of market messages, all of which belong to a single market message MO.