The ORM Foundation

Dear Matt, One other statement, in your last sentence, needs comment. Here is your last sentence again: "Without knowing the data type, you might have a conceptual model that can be interpreted given some external context (meaning the model will have an affinity to the culture it was entered in), but you do not have a model that can be ...

Dear Matt, Now that I've gotten back to an Internet connection that I don't have to pay for by the minute, and had a chance to read your very worthy replies carefully, I am sorry I missed some of the very worthy comments and points you made. To which I have some degree of basic agreement, but don't draw (leap to?) the same conclusions ...

 Hi Clifford,  Your points are all well taken -- but only if we're assuming a computer implementation of the model. At the conceptual level, we're never assuming that. So, if (as I assume) this discussion is about ORM -- which is a CONCEPTUAL modeling language -- then I think my point still stands, notwithstanding that your ...

Hi Clifford, et al, Please allow me to throw in my two pence / cents. I have always taught my students--and, it clears up ALL these conundrums, to say--that what we mean by "a value" is, "a character sequence". That's it, that's all that distinguishes a "value" from other kinds of ...

Hi John, Thanks for the data use cases. The most straightforward way to model this would be as a single quaternary fact type, something like:   This would map to a single relational table. However, numeric values for different entity-category-quantity combinations would appear on different rows. If you want all the values for a ...

Hi John, It sounds like you need some ternaries, or a nested m:n fact type relating the MeasuredEntity and Category object types. But from your description, it's hard to know for sure. Any way you could give us some verbalized fact samples, or at least a data use case (e.g. output report or query result)? That would be the easiest way to ...

Hi Ken  May I jump in? Since you're discussing such an important issue, I hope you won't mind if I critique your latest argument just a little.  Pretty much everything you said is true; the problem is that it doesn't support (logically) the point you're trying to prove. You make a persuasive case that we need to be ...

Today in the NORMA forum, Ken Evans responded to Andy Reiser regarding (among other things) a wish which he had expressed, that NORMA would get "picked up by universities". Ken answered with the below three questions about how we could argue for ORM being taught at universities:" It would help us to help you if ...