The ORM Foundation

What are the constraints or possibilities for an XMI (OMG model metadata standard) output or XMI export extension from NORMA? [Or is XMI already available?}

My employer seems bent on UML modeling and having a model repository based on XMI. I'm a bit skeptical, having explored UML data modeling a few years back. My recollection is that a number of the business constraints that ORM (or even E-R) documents are simply not in the vocabulary of UML. Admittedly, I don't use ORM fully, but find the NORMA Fact Editor to be an extremely fast way to enter models and the Verbalization Browser extremely useful in checking my model with a business client.

• Is it (or might it be) possible to convert an ORM to UML and export the remainder as XMI?
• Considering that my employer is a large enterprise, would sufficient information remain in XMI to be useful for aligning data modeling efforts across this enterprise?

I researched this possibility a while back, and understand that the problem is not with UML per se (you can do most things if you're willing to use OCL), but with the fact that every tool has its own version of XMI and it's almost useless for interchange - nothing works properly with anything else. Add to that that most serious UML is done using Rational products, which have their own Eclipse-derived XML schema (XMI is available but not a good option) and I decided it just wasn't worth the effort for me, yet. In addition, many organisations which do use UML only use it for modelling and never generate code from their models. A bit pointless in my view.