The ORM Foundation

What is the intended difference in use between the fields 'InformalDescription' and 'Note'? Is the first field meant to give an informal verbalization and not more than that, and the second field to provide any additional comments?

That is how I've understood their usage, Informal descriptions for an informal verbalisation where it may be necessary and Notes for additional comments.

In practice I rarely use notes on an object or fact type. I like them to be more visible – so I prefer using the Model Note and Model Note Connector for this purpose.

That's about right. The intent behind the informal description is to provide additional information about the entity and fact types. There are schools of thought that place a heavy emphasis on informal descriptions and links/hierarchies between such descriptions. However, I've never been able to write more that a few informal description lines without overlapping the formal portions of the model, so I rarely spend much time in exhaustive informal descriptions except as a way to extra formal model information.

The only other difference is that NORMA has an option to display informal descriptions in tooltips on the model, whereas the notes appear only in verbalizations.

In any case, NORMA doesn't do anything beyond verbalization with either of these informal fields, so it is up to the user where they want to place the data.

-Matt

Tom and Matt, thank you for your answers!

Jacob