RE: [mdt-sbvr.dev] Wiki page for SBVR requirements

["Stan Hendryx" <stan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dave,

You wrote:
> In general, a considerable amount of work is needed to 
> specify mappings between SBVR, UML, ODM, or others.  

Yes.

> I believe that this Eclipse project can help by providing 
> reference implementations of mappings related to SBVR.

Absolutely. My suggestion is to do a mapping to OWL first, then use the ODM
mapping from OWL to UML to get to UML. By then, the IMM committee may have
the ER metamodel and the ER mapping to OWL added to ODM.

> SBVR focuses on business concerns, while ODM and UML target other needs. 

This sentence from the Date-Time RFP indicates an all-to-common, and
unfortunate, misconception about the domain of SBVR. Some of us feel SBVR is
mis-named, that the name implies a limitation or focus on commercial
endeavors, such as the above, that was not intended by the OMG and that is
in fact not a limitation of SBVR at all. I've heard suggestions to rename
SBVR to avoid the pigeon-hole effect of its name. The Business Semantics of
Business Rules RFP, to which SBVR is the adopted response, says, "The term
'business' [mass noun] is used here in its core sense, "a person's regular
occupation, profession, or trade," and refers to any kind of organized,
purposeful human work activity." [br/2003-06-03 6.1.1, p.21]. This is the
broad sense in which the term "business" should be considered when reading
SBVR. Certainly the drafters of the Date-Time RFP did not mean to imply that
ODM and UML are not targeted to business concerns (in any sense of the
word)! 

What is different about ODM, UML, and SBVR are their forms of representation
and their communication targets. They are each capable of rendering
different, but isomorphic, representations of certain semantics. OWL (the
centerpiece of ODM) is machine readable. UML is readable by people fluent in
the UML notation language, and machines. SBVR is readable by people in their
own natural language, and machines. As such, SBVR provides a semantic bridge
between ordinary people and machines. The logics and semantic
representational capabilities of SBVR are a superset of those of UML or OWL,
making SBVR more expressive than either of the others. The combination of
its readability and its logical expressivity make SBVR well suited for
application in any domain that needs to capture a precise meaning of natural
language inscriptions and process these semantics with machines. Ability to
convert between SBVR representations and OWL or UML forms will greatly
magnify the usefulness of all of them.

> The date and time vocabulary solicited in this document 
> will serve as a study example for analyzing what model "equivalence"
means.

Certainly a good choice for a study example. To me, semantic equivalence of
dates and times is a given. What needs to be analyzed are the
representational mappings that preserve meaning, not what "equivalence"
means.


Stan


Stan Hendryx
Hendryx & Associates
Sunnyvale, California

phone: 408 773-8089
mobile: 408 218-9455