This paper provides an overview of, and motivation for, the enhancements introduced by the ORM 2 graphical notation.
Object-role Modeling (ORM) is a fact-oriented modeling approach for expressing, transforming and querying information at a conceptual level. Unlike Entity-Relationship modeling and Unified Modeling Language class diagramming, fact-oriented modeling is attribute-free, treating all elementary facts as relationships expressed in natural language sentences.
For information modeling, ORM graphical notations are typically far more expressive than other notations, and ORM’s attribute-free nature promotes semantic stability and facilitates natural verbalization. Based on industrial experience that identified ways to improve current ORM languages and associated tools, a project is under way to provide open-source tool support for a second generation ORM (ORM 2), that has significant advances over current ORM technology.