The ORM Foundation

Support for Visual Studio 2010

JimLudden — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:29:26 GMT

What are your plans for installing NORMA into VS 2010 (a.k.a. 'Dev10')?

Other than the usual and unpredictable amount of work testing and building workarounds, about how much effort has it taken in the past to adapt the installer to new versions of Visual Studio?

tnx - Jim

Temporal modeling through "one at a time" uniqueness constraints

Clifford Heath — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 02:52:17 GMT

I've been thinking of exploring temporal modeling through introducing "one at a time" uniqueness constraints. That is, where the mapping takes care of the mapping of the history of a given N-ary fact type, by internally injecting a time role into the fact type, and enforcing the time roles to model uniqueness at a point in time. The point here being that generated data access code can have a simple API to the "current" data, and another API to access the full history.

This seems to be a remarkably simply way to handle a large class of temporal modeling problems.

Does anyone see problems with this as a conceptual modeling notion?

There is obviously the need for mapping options, because it can be mapped many ways and you need to choose the most appropriate one. Perhaps we don't need to discuss the pragmatic concerns in this thread; start another if you'd like to discuss that.

VisioModeler Fix for Win 7 and Vista

fenton — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:22:28 GMT

This is a re-post from an IT education list I belong to. I tested it and it solved my problem. VisioModeler does not work in Windows 7 and Vista, however there is a fix. 1. Download and install VisioModeler from: http://download.microsoft.com/download/visio2000enterprise/ORMtool/3.1/WIN98/EN-US/MSVM31.EXE 2. Download this DLL: ftp://ftp.mackichan.com/download/sh33w32.dll 3. Go to the VisioModeler program directory (like C:\Program Files(x86)\Microsoft VisioModeler 3.1\Program or C:\Program Files\Microsoft VisioModeler 3.1\Program) and overwrite SH33W32.DLL with the file you downloaded in step 2. 4. Run VisioModeler. Mine worked fine at this point, but if it fails to run, proceed to step 5, otherwise, finish here. 5. Download and run shfix.exe from: http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/229251.htm 6. Extract shw32.dll from the executable. There are only two files in there. 7. Rename the DLL to sh33w32.dll 8. Go to the VisioModeler program directory (like C:\Program Files(x86)\Microsoft VisioModeler 3.1\Program or C:\Program Files\Microsoft VisioModeler 3.1\Program) and overwrite SH33W32.DLL with the file you extracted in step 6 and renamed in step 7. 9. Run VisioModeler. Credit for these instructions goes to Luke Vear, a student in grade 12 Virtual Schooling IPT (who actually made an EXE to do the patching for you - you can download it from http://www.acromos.com/vssipt/VisioModelerFix.zip if you wish, but it's not required). The first 4 steps got VisioModeler working on my PC at home running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. Regards, Richard Kelly Stanthorpe SHS Virtual Schooling Service

Are subset and equality constraints dispensable?

jakob.voss — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:12:44 GMT

Models get hard to read if you use subset constraints and equality constraints between roles. Sure there are good reasons to use them, but I found that you do not need special symbols and line styles to depict them. Suptyping and subset constraints are the same concept - one for object types, the other for (combinations of) roles. So why not just mark the subset and equality symbols as deprecated and use one visual method instead of using two distinct diagram notations for nearly the same?

In addition we get another way to depict duplicated object types in a model (the both-sided arrow is implied if you use the same name for two object types).

P.S: I added the third row with splitted arrows later.

Visual Studio 2010

ronmcf — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 23:53:50 GMT

We plan to install Visual Studio 2010 in our student labs. I'd like to use NORMA in some of my courses, and so I'm wondering if you know when the download for NORMA for Visual Studio 2010 will be available. Should I be planning for our Fall term beginning in September, or our Winter term that starts in January? Thanks.

mapping orm into OWL

mushtaha — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:53:59 GMT

Hello, I have a question and really appreciate to find an answer here. Does the NORMA export the ORM to OWL language (in other words, does NORMA supports an automated mapping from ORM to OWL)

Best regards
Abed

Validations that probably ought to happen for reference modes

shada22 — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 15:32:40 GMT

I was doing some fiddling with the ORM diagram discussed at: http://www.ormfoundation.org/forums/t/589.aspx when I noticed that the generated SQL Server output contained TWO colorID IDENTITY columns. This was clearly due to me using .ID as the reference mode instead of .code as in the linked discussion. However, shouldn't a validation error occur here because an AutoCounter reference mode IS NOT suitable for absorption? Additionally, after changing .ID to .code there wasn't a validation error for 'not specifying the length of the FixedLength data type' as well. I haven't quite gotten around to debugging the problem yet, but thought I would post a note here about it. Fyi, Bill

Feature Request: Streamlined Application of UC's to Binary Fact Types

paulbaker3 — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:46:38 GMT

Hi Matt,
This is Paul Baker from Neumont University. This is a minor feature request. I am getting my Master's degree under Dr. Halpin's tutelage out here in Malaysia, so I am starting to use the NORMA tool on a daily basis. Terry and I were talking about streamlining the process of adding uniqueness constraints to a fact type and I came up with the following suggestion:

When selecting both roles in a binary fact type, it would be helpful for the tool to give you the option to apply 1:1 UC or a M:M UC in the context menu, like so:

From ORM Diagrams

Please excuse the poor cut and paste mock-up. This would cut down the clicks to add a 1:1 UC from 6 to 4 and would be a more intuitive experience when adding UC's to both roles in a binary fact type (either 1:1 or M:M).

Cheers,
Paul Baker

Unary role mappings to Relational columns

shada22 — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 15:36:56 GMT

Person isSmoker currently transforms into (more or less): BOOLEAN isSmoker isNullable at the relational level. Wouldn't the saner translation to relational be: BOOLEAN isSmoker !isNullable? Distinguishing between NULL implying false and 1 implying true for users of the relational model seems odd to me. Thanks, Bill

Reference Modes explained

jakob.voss — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 10:09:01 GMT

Reference modes are not described very deeply in Haplin and Morgan (2008) - there is an introduction to the different reference mode kinds (popular, general, and unit based) at page 85 and page 98, but the ORM syntax cheatsheet does not distinguish. I tried to unwrap the semantics of reference modes in a picture (source):

I also added a non-standard extension to implicitely specify a supertype similar to the syntax that implicitly defines a dimension supertype (unit-based reference modes). Please correct me if I am wrong or if the picture contains errors. As I understand reference modes, they just abbreviate binary 1-to-1 relationships that are used to uniquely identify an entity by a value.

Integration with Visual Studio

JimLudden — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 21:53:27 GMT

What integration does (or will soon) NORMA provide to other parts of Visual Studio? I'm thinking of the following:

Team Foundation Server Source Library
Visual differences between versions stored in TFS source library
Identification of individual ORM objects from the rest of Visual Studio
Link to ORM role or object from a Visual Studio work item
Click between linked ORM objects and linked work items (e.g. test case, user story, dev. task)

and a separate question desire:

Separate models that can be worked on (simultaneously by separate modelers) yet linked together and with selected objects visible and usable from one another.

UUID vs URI

pcarbonn — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 08:11:44 GMT

In this simplified metamodel for ORM, UUID are used to identify elements in the model. This contrasts with RDF which uses Universal Resources Identifiers (URI). This observation led me to the following thought: what if ORM used URI too ? What if type identifiers were prefixed with a web address, implicitly or explicitly ?

It would enable the "interoperability" of ORM models, one ORM model being able to refer to another one. It would also make ORM more RDF-like, with similar applications. And possibly make ORM the next generation of RDF ?

Any thoughts ?

Is it possible to make ORM value types redundant?

michel — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 11:49:49 GMT

Being new to ORM I am wondering if it is possbile to make ORM value types redundant? Having read http://www.proace.com/2010/02/17/orm-basics-entities-values-roles-and-facts/, I do understand there is a difference between value and entity types in the UoD, but is it really needed?

Why not have one object type, draw values and entities the same and let users interpret which object type (value/entity) it is.

tkz-orm - a new way to draw ORM2 diagrams with TikZ instead of NORMA

jakob.voss — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 14:42:47 GMT

I have released tkz-orm, a LaTeX package to draw ORM2 diagrams by using the TikZ package. See here for an example and here for the documentation. You need the CVS version of TikZ in order to use tkz-orm (a build is available at texamples). The full package is free software / open source, so you don't need any commercial softwarelike Visual Studio in order to create ORM2 diagrams- and you can hack it Of course feedback is very appreciated.

The prospects of ORM Lite

pcarbonn — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 07:48:42 GMT

Dear all,

I'd like to hear your thoughts about ORM Lite.

In a previous thread, Fenton asked for a free tool for ORM, to be used by students and enthusiasts. It would certainly help in the adoption of ORM. I would think that ORM Lite could be the answer. It would just need an update of its user interface to make it easier to use (e.g. remove the planning interface) . Better documentation would also help.

I would be curious to know how stable ORM Lite currently is : is it still buggy or production ready ? Is it complete in its coverage of ORM-2 ? Would anybody be willing to help ? (Private responses are welcome)

Thanks in advance,

Pierre C.

ORM2 Exchange Language

jakob.voss — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:56:18 GMT

Is there an official (!) exchange language for ORM2 or are there plans to create and support (!) such a language? I know the paper "A markup language for ORM business rules" by Demey, Jarrar, and Meersman and surely each tool (NORMA, ORM Lite/GanttPV, DogmaModeler etc.) has it own file formats but without standardized exchange language to import and export model between different tools, you are stuck to one tool - and you end up in modeling in a proprietary tool language instead of ORM. Which ORM exchange language standard should I build on to create my own ORM-based tools? Is there any interest of exchange at all in the ORM community or do you prefer everyone having "his own" dialect of ORM ;-) ?

Missing VirtualTreeGrid 9.0.0 dll

VYoung — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 20:22:57 GMT

I just installed the latest version of NORMA on a WinXP SP3 box with VS Prof. 2008. When I try to open the Object-Role Modeling File in VS I get the error "Cannot load file or assembly Microsoft.VisualStudio.VirtualTreeGrid, version=9.0.0.0 PublicKeyToken...or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified"

I've Googled for VirtualTreeGrid.dll and have found all kinds of blogs stating there is a security risk with this dll. So I'm guessing my virus security application may have removed the file. Does any one know if there is really a security risk? If not, is there an easy way to get hte dll reinstalled?

How does ORM compare to SBVR ?

pcarbonn — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 13:01:27 GMT

When would one organisation choose one vs the other ? Is there a paper comparing the two ?

Thanks in advance,

RDF and OWL

pcarbonn — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 05:43:43 GMT

You may want to open a new topic on RDF and OWL in the"Standard" section, next to SBVR.

Here is a a question I would like to see answered in that section : How does ORM compare to RDF and OWL ? Among other things, what is the benefit of n-ary predicates compared to binary ones ? Any pointer to an existing document on the web ?

Thanks in advance !

Visual Studio Express 2008

fenton — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:41:42 GMT

I represent an educational institution, in Australia, that currently uses VisioModeler 3.1 (unsupported). We need to give students free software to ensure that they can all access the tools to complete the course. VisioModeler is a beautiful stand-alone product that has a gentle learning curve and creates awesome models which can be mapped to a data dictionary. Students have no problems grasping it early and understanding the process of creating a CS. VisioModeler no longer works under Win 7. I cannot purchase VEA to obtain the exact same functionality that VisioModeler offered. NORMA is the closest product that fits the criteria we need. I will have to re-write all of the tutorials for our students to use NORMA whilst on campus. I have tested it under Visual Studio 2005, but I am worried about not being able to give students a copy of VS to install on their own machines. My question is - if I give students a copy of Visual Studio Express 2008 (the free app) - will NORMA install and work under that environment? We cannot give them Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 as it is not free.

NORMA under Win 7

fenton — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 00:25:05 GMT

Haven't tested it yet in an educational LAN setup, but I am assuming that if VS 2005 and VS 2008 run under Win 7, then the NORMA plugin should too, right?

Concept Maps

JohnBorowiec — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 13:35:01 GMT

Hey

Well it seems that ORM is quite similar to Concept Map. In ORM you only have to add constraints.

Diagram metamodel added to ActiveFacts metamodel

Clifford Heath — Thu, 20 May 2010 05:03:46 GMT

Folk,

Thanks to NORMA, I present a metamodel for ORM2 diagrams as an extension of the ActiveFacts metamodel. This diagram is also available in the Files section under "Open Source Models".

Note some items relevant to this model being used with AdtiveFacts, rather than ORM2 in general:

Where NORMA uses the word "model" or "schema", ActiveFacts uses "Vocabulary".
This metamodel has been added to the "next" or upcomingversion of the metamodel, where object type is called ObjectType, not the current version, where they're called "Concept".
The constraint shape subtypes that are shown are shown because their position is relative to something they're attached to, not to the diagram origin.
The closest thing that ActiveFacts has to a Model Note is its Context Notes, hence the naming mismatch.

The CQL text for this model fragment follows:

DisplayRoleNamesSetting is written as String restricted to {'false', 'true'};
RotationSetting is written as String restricted to {'left', 'right'};
X is written as Integer(32);
Y is written as Integer(32);
Position is identified by X and Y where
        Position is at one X,
        Position is at one Y;

Diagram is identified by Vocabulary and Name where
        Diagram is for one Vocabulary,
        Vocabulary contains Diagram,
        Diagram is called one Name,
        Name is of Diagram;

Shape is identified by Diagram and Position where
        Shape is in one Diagram,
        Diagram includes Shape,
        Shape is at at most one Position;
Shape is expanded;

ConstraintShape is a kind of Shape;
ConstraintShape is for one Constraint;

FactTypeShape is a kind of Shape;
FactTypeShape has at most one DisplayRoleNamesSetting;
FactTypeShape is for one FactType,
        FactType has FactTypeShape;
FactTypeShape has at most one RotationSetting;

FrequencyConstraintShape is a kind of ConstraintShape;

ModelNoteShape is a kind of Shape;
ModelNoteShape is for one ContextNote;

ObjectTypeShape is a kind of Shape;
ObjectTypeShape is for one ObjectType,
        ObjectType has ObjectTypeShape;
ObjectTypeShape has expanded reference mode;

ObjectifiedFactTypeNameShape is a kind of Shape identified by FactTypeShape where
        ObjectifiedFactTypeNameShape is for one FactTypeShape,
        FactTypeShape has at most one ObjectifiedFactTypeNameShape;

ReadingShape is a kind of Shape identified by FactTypeShape where
        FactTypeShape has at most one ReadingShape,
        ReadingShape is for one FactTypeShape;
ReadingShape is for one Reading,
        Reading has ReadingShape;

RingConstraintShape is a kind of ConstraintShape;
RingConstraintShape is attached to one FactType;

RoleDisplay is where
        FactTypeShape displays Role in Ordinal position;
RoleDisplay has FrequencyConstraintShape,
        FrequencyConstraintShape is for one RoleDisplay;

RoleNameShape is a kind of Shape;
RoleNameShape is for one Role;

ValueConstraintShape is a kind of ConstraintShape;
RoleDisplay has at most one ValueConstraintShape,
        ValueConstraintShape is for at most one RoleDisplay;
ValueConstraintShape is for at most one ObjectTypeShape,
        ObjectTypeShape has ValueConstraintShape;

ValueType has at most one ValueConstraint,
        ValueConstraint constrains ValueType;
either ValueConstraintShape is for ObjectTypeShape or ValueConstraintShape is for RoleDisplay but not both;
each combination FactTypeShape, Ordinal occurs at most one time in
        FactTypeShape displays Role in Ordinal position;

ActiveFacts and CQL

Clifford Heath — Thu, 20 May 2010 03:57:00 GMT

ActiveFacts is a free open-source project of Data Constellation which implements the Constellation Query Language (CQL) and the Constellation API. The Constellation Query Language was presented at the ORM Workshop 2009 in Portugal, and a version of that presentation is available in a screencast you can download here (links at top right). You can also install and use ActiveFacts freely on your own computer, even for commercial purposes, with no strings attached and no viral licensing.

The Constellation Query Language (CQL) is a plain-text restricted natural language which provides full-featured ORM2 capabilities without needing to use diagrams. As such, it is especially suitable for use in collaborating over models with people who do not have, would not use, or are not trained to understand an ORM2 diagramming tool such as NORMA. It's also useful when combined with differential revision management tools, and only requires plain-text tools such as text editors and email programs. CQL extends the ORM2 metamodel a little, and will be further extended to provide full query language capabilities surpassing SQL's select. CQL is also under development in French and Spanish, and other languages will become available over time - it's intended that the same model and database may be presented and queries in multiple languages.

ActiveFacts (written in the Ruby scripting language) centres around the ActiveFacts generator, which uses the ActiveFacts metamodel. The generator:

can read models created in either NORMA or directly in CQL (more input formats will be available over time, or you can write your own)
can transform models into object-oriented or 5NF relational form
can generate (using a modular extensible generator architecture):

CQL (if your NORMA models have adequate readings, they convert easily)
Ruby code for the Constellation API
SQL for several dialects
fact-oriented, object-oriented or relational code or documentation using generators you can easily write for yourself.
other generators may be available for purchase or on commission

The Constellation API is Ruby code which supports the output of the Ruby code generator. The generated code allows representation and manipulation of any collection of facts from your model. Although it's implemented in an object-oriented language, the API is fact-oriented. As such, there are no new and delete operations, instead you must (within a constellation of facts) assert and retract instances of facts. It is not possible to create duplicate instances within a constellation - a duplicate assert will just return the previous instance. All object instances are fully cross-referenced, such that every role played by each object is a method available on that object. For example, if you have a Person instance, you can say person.birth_date.all_directorship_as_appointment_date to get every company director who was appointed on the day this person was born. This is a radically new style of programming - it's true fact-oriented programming. Constellations in the API can not yet be retrieved from and saved to the relational storage for the same model, but this is work in progress which solves for the first time the notorious problem known as the Vietnam of Computer Science.

ActiveFacts contains (to my knowledge) the only published ORM2 metamodel which has actually been proven by being used to generate ORM2 tools. The metamodel differs from and extends somewhat the accepted ORM2 structures. In particular, it:

includes a dimensional model for value types, supporting arbitrary conversion between compatible values in different units (including ephemeral conversions such as between currencies)
models uniqueness, mandatory and frequency constraints as one constraint type called presence constraints, which allows easier constraint type migration
supports deontic constraints by reference to the enforcement action that must be taken when the constraint is found to have been invalidated
supports Business Context Notes to record the reasons why a particular entity type or constraint was created, and also to record the date and participants in agreeding to those reasons.

The ActiveFacts metamodel is maintained in CQL and NORMA, and is used with the generator to produce the code that supports all the ActiveFacts tools, including the CQL compiler. Being bootstrapped in this way makes it very easy to evolve the tools, and shows that the metamodel is actually sufficient and correct for converting between fact-oriented languages. Amidst all the noise and delay involved in our attempts to create a common agreed metamodel, it silently delivers. It also amply demonstrates the power of using fact-oriented modeling in the automatic generation of framework code to support real systems.

ActiveFacts is also being used as the basis for some enterprise-level and graphical tools for collaborative modelling, but these are not open source. Contact Data Constellation for more details.

Question / How to achieve the Value-Comparison Constraint in NormA

hjr_heal — Wed, 12 May 2010 05:54:43 GMT

That`s in Page 290, Information Modeling and Relational Database: startdate > enddate

Waiting for your precious answer.

Thank you.