Hi Brian, I don't know where I got John from. I apologise.
On Join Subset Constraint, I believe the intended interpretation, and we'll most likely find when it is implemented in NORMA, is that it operates in a manner that "If you can't query it, you may as well not be able to store it"....so my reference to Schrödinger's cat is only helpful/relevant in analysing how it works. It is the part where I say "it serves no purpose to consider the 'join subset constraint' without both concepts in place [subset & join]" that should be more acceptable to how the constraint works (i.e. restricting/constraining population sets)
On the whole I believe tools like InfoModeler didn't take off because they were hard/fiddly/timeconsuming to use, and I couldn't agree more that with your comments that ORM would be an appropriate 'front end' for a RDBMS. Of course, some users of NORMA may argue that that is exactly what they are using if for.
I think, don't be shy in creating a seperate threat about your question "a UofD to be considered as just the terms (linguistic molecules), of discussion about a domain; or is it the totality of terms, facts, concepts and perceptions appropriate to such a discussion?".
Let's ask Ken if we can have a thread just on Philosophy under Research, so we can discuss that there. This thread is for extentions to ORM.
I'll leave discussion on that to there, but as a heads up (and to stay relevant to this thread),....we live in a day and age where we live among the Euclids of this industry. Which is to say, it won't matter what anyone thinks about what we may or may not do in ORM, we may only go be the axioms and rules of inference of ORM, or venture to 'extend' ORM in some way.
Having said that, and if you've read any of my posts, I'm not beyond giving anything a good kick to see if it falls over. So I believe there is great merit in discussing the points of your suggestion.
Best regds
Vic