The ORM Foundation

Questions on verbalization of objectified predicate

Below is a nORMa May 08 drop model fragment.

One question concerns the 3^rd line of verbalization:

Employee was born on Date.
Each Employee was born on at most one Date.
This association with Employee provides the preferred identification scheme for Date.
It is possible that more than one Employee was born on the same Date.

This line only appears after the fact type was objectified as "Birth"

What does that verbalization mean? Preferred ID for a value type object?

Another question is why is an objectified predicate verbalized as a fact type, rather than as an object?  (The object shape was selected).  I can see where that makes sense, but shouldn't some reference be made to the new object, as it is listed under object types in the ORM Model browser?

BRN..

Wow, ancient bug (Dec 2005), nobody noticed. Basically, the role player for the role opposite the internal constraint was being verbalized instead the associated 'PreferredIdentifierFor' relationship. I've fixed the bogus verbalization in changeset 1288, added a small indent to the 'This association...', and added the same phrase for multi-column preferred identifiers (including externals).

The shape you're looking at for the objectification is actually a 'FactTypeShape' with a border. It is bound to the FactType, not the ObjectType. You can see the ObjectType verbalization by selecting the associated name shape, which represents just the ObjectType. You can also see the ObjectType with the Objectified FactType selection in an expansion in the properties window.

We do not currently verbalize the objectification relationship from either the ObjectType or the FactType ends, but we probably should. I'll let Terry suggest the phraseology (["Employee was born on Date" is objectified as "Birth"] or simply [This FactType is objectified as "Birth"] on the FactType end and ["Birth" objectifies "Employee was born on Date"] or [This EntityType objectifies "Employee was born on Date"] on the EntityType end.

Summary: the bad information is fixed, and I'll let Terry chime in on additional phraseology.

-Matt

Hello Matt,

Your explaination of 'objectified' FactType, verbalized as FactType seems reasonable.  Adding verbalization for OFT's can only help.  I realize that an OFT is just a conceptual device; but that's the name of the game here.

Take a look at the thread on other problems with May drop, when you have a chance.  I made some headway in isolating part of the problem (uninstalled and reinstalled nORMa versions on a couple of setups here).  I'll write up what I found as a post to that thread when I have more time.  One problem on both systems seems related to DSL tool versioning.  Clearing DSL redist. from the Vista box, then reintalling May drop cured most woes there.  Explicitly deleting DSL redit. from WS2008 box, then installing individual items from drop folder, helped there too - to a point.  There's still an issue with Projects begun on old version (2/08), then opened in May drop.

The readme covers some of this, but questions there too.  I actually copy/pasted the readme text into Word, to make it easier to read.  While at it, I did some editing markup on the docx.  I'll pass that along to you later; so you can use it if you find it helpful.

One thing that is certain - the Setup.bat doesn't work on either my Vista or WS2008 box (full admin on each).

Well, you don't call'em CTPs for nothing.

TH mentioned major changes to verbalization - and crunch time commitments there.  I figure, if he's swamped, he's probably standing on your shoulders anyway! 

BRN..