ORM 2012 - International Workshop on Fact-Oriented Modeling (ORM 2012)

Following successful workshops held in Cyprus (2005), France (2006), Portugal (2007), Mexico (2008), Portugal (2009), and Crete (2010 and 2011) this is the eighth in a series of fact-oriented modeling workshops run in conjunction with the OTM conferences. Fact-oriented modeling is a conceptual, natural-language-based approach to modeling and querying the information content of business domains in terms of the underlying facts of interest, where all facts and rules may be verbalized in language readily understandable by users of those business domains.
Unlike Entity-Relationship (ER) modeling and UML class diagrams, fact-oriented modeling treats all facts as relationships (unary, binary, ternary etc.). How facts are grouped into structures (e.g. attribute-based entity types, classes, relation schemes, XML schemas) is considered a design level, implementation issue that is irrelevant to the capturing of essential business semantics. Avoiding attributes in the base model enhances semantic stability and populatability, as well as facilitating natural verbalization and thus more productive communication with all stakeholders. For information modeling, fact-oriented graphical notations are typically far more expressive than those provided by other notations. Fact-oriented textual languages are based on formal subsets of native languages, so are easier to understand by business people than technical languages like OCL. Fact-oriented modeling includes procedures for mapping to attribute-based structures, so may also be used to front-end other approaches.
Fact-oriented modeling has been used successfully in industry for over 30 years, and is taught in universities around the world. The fact-oriented modeling approach comprises a family of closely related “dialects”, the most well known being Object-Role Modeling (ORM), Cognition enhanced Natural language Information Analysis Method (CogNIAM) and Fully-Communication Oriented Information Modeling (FCO-IM). Though adopting a different graphical notation, the Object-oriented Systems Model (OSM) is a close relative, with its attribute-free philosophy. The Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR) proposal adopted by the Object Management Group in 2007 is a recent addition to the family of fact-oriented approaches.
Commercial tools supporting the fact-oriented approach include the ORM solution within Microsoft’s Visio for Enterprise Architects, the CogNIAM tool Doctool, the FCO-IM tool CaseTalk, and the Collibra ontology tool suite. The NORMA (Natural ORM Architect) tool for ORM 2 is available as a free, open-source plug-in to Visual Studio; a commercial, professional version of NORMA is also under development. Free ORM tools include InfoModeler, Infagon, ActiveFacts, and ORM-Lite. DogmaStudio is an ORM-based tool for specifying ontologies. Various SBVR tools are also currently under development. General information about fact-orientation may be found at The ORM Foundation site www.ORMFoundation.org.
Goals and Topics:
The main goal of this workshop is to provide a forum for practitioners and researchers interested in fact-oriented modeling methods to meet, and exchange research and implementation ideas and results. It also provides this group of practitioners/researchers an opportunity to present their research papers and experience reports, and to take part in open discussions. Relevant topics include (but are not limited to) theoretical and/or empirical exploration of fact-oriented modeling methods, as well as case studies and experience reports related to:
? Theory/principles of fact-oriented modeling (ORM, CogNIAM, SBVR, FCO-IM etc.)
? Application of fact-oriented modeling to data warehousing and business intelligence
? Fact-oriented integration of business information, processes and events
? Fact-oriented modeling of ontologies
? Metamodels for fact-oriented modeling and business practice
? Fact-oriented metamodeling best practices
? Fact orientation, communication and understandability
? Industrial experience with fact-oriented modeling
? Fact-orientation and terminology science and practice
? Fact-oriented application generation
? Educational experience with fact-oriented modeling
? Fact-oriented modeling and business rules
? Temporal issues in fact-oriented modeling
? Fact-oriented modeling and business service modeling
? Fact-oriented modeling and workflow modeling
? Fast-oriented modeling and data integration
? Agent-oriented extensions to fact-oriented modeling
? Tools to support fact-oriented modeling and business practice
? Fact-orientation and verbalization of business rules
? Fact-orientation and validation of business rules
? Fact-oriented query languages
? Transforming fact-based models to/from attribute-based models
? Comparing fact-orientation with other approaches
Intended Audience:
The workshop is primarily aimed at researchers and practitioners interested in conceptual modeling approaches for the analysis and design of information systems and ontologies, including modeling of data, processes and events. Attendees familiar with fact-oriented approaches have the opportunity to update and deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area. Attendees less familiar with fact-oriented approaches have an ideal opportunity to learn about the approach from world experts in the area, and adopt or adapt the many benefits of the approach.
Workshop co-chairs:
Terry Halpin
LogicBlox, Australia and
INTI International University, Malaysia
Herman Balsters
University of Groningen,
The Netherlands
Important Dates (2012):
Abstracts due: May 18
Papers due: May 25
Acceptance Notification: July 2
Camera-ready copies: July 16
Registration due: July 16
OTM Conferences: September 10-14