Following Figure depicts CharacteristicValues and their associations to Entities, in the figure a RootEntity.  A CharacteristicValue is one chosen or entered for an Entity for a specific CharacteristicSpecification.  In the example above the instances would be “blue” for the face plate and black for the case. The values would be related to the respective CharacteristicSpecValue.<br/>When values are not specified in CharacteristicSpecValue or the other “spec value” entities shown in the figure, but are entered for a CharacteristicSpecification, then CharacteristicValue is related to CharacteristicSpecification or one of the other “spec” entities shown in the figure.  For example, a startTime is a CharacteristicSpecification for a Video on Demand, an entered value of 6 Aug 2007 would be related to startTime.  This one of the two cases when a CharacteristicValue would be related to a CharacteristicSpecification and when the value attribute of CharacteristicValue would have to be populated.  The other case is when a value is chosen from a range of values defined by the CharacteristicSpecValue.  When a CharacteristicSpecValue is chosen from a list of discrete values or it is unchangeable (via the canBeOverridden attribute set to “false”), there is no need to populate the value attribute, unless performance considerations required this from an implementation perspective.  In these cases the instance of CharacteristicValue is related to the instance of CharacteristicSpecValue and not the instance of CharacteristicSpecification.<br/><i>Note:  CharacteristicValue can also be directly related to an entity, such as ServicePerformance or Customer if they do not inherit from the RootEntity</i><br/>