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Symmetric Hierarchy is the simplest form of a simple hierarchy. It has:
- All levels in the hierarchy must exist.
- There in only one path from bottom most to top. In other words, a level cannot exist in any other hierarchy.
For example- you will not have city in any other hierarchy path. Simple example- is the same ' Office—> City—> State—> Country—> Continent—> Globe'
Asymmetric Hierarchy
Asymmetric hierarchy will be same as that of symmetric hierarchy apart from the fact that, you may not have lower levels existing in some instances. Let's take an example of Sales Channel. In this you may have
3rd party sales agent—>Sales Executive—>Sales Manager—>Sales Area —>Sales Zone—>Sales Region
In the above, for certain instance, it might be possible that a 3rd party sales agent may not exist and the sale is directly done by the sales executive. Therefore there will be nil instances for lowest level in this hierarchy in certain cases.
Generalized hierarchy:
In generalized hierarchy, there may be shared levels within the two different hierarchy paths, but an instance at lower level, cannot belong to two instances in the parent. For example
3rd party sales agent—> Sales Executive—>Indirect Channel--Sales Manager—>Sales Area Manager—>Sales Zone head—>Sales Region head
Sales executive—>direct Channel--Sales Manager—>Direct Channel-Sales Area manager—>Sales Zone head—>Sales Region head
In the above two cases you have shared level at 'Sales Executive', 'Sales Zone' and 'Sales Region'. However, any instance of sales executive will belong to only one parent- Either to an Indirect Channel -Sales Manager OR Direct Channel- Sales Manager. In other words, If a sales executive is working for two managers (one direct and one indirect), it will not be a simple hierarchy.
Non-covering hierarchy
In this hierarchy, an instance of an intermediate level may be missing. For example, in the below hierarchy,
Sales executive—>direct Channel--Sales Manager—>Direct Channel-Sales Area manager—>Sales Zone head—>Sales Region head
For some instances, you may have a direct sales Manager directly reporting to sales zone head as the zone might be smaller and the sales area manager level may not be existing in that zone.
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