Month Year Issue

May 1998 Issue: 2

Journal of Conceptual Modeling
www.inconcept.com/jcm

Editor's Notes: JCM: On The Road
by Scot A. Becker

I'm writing and publishing most of this issue on the road from Albuquerque to Minneapolis to Seattle to Harrisburg. I have a bunch of company stuff to prepare as well as this publication. So, you may find a few things wrong; I apologize in advance.

About the last issue

The last issue, while a bit hectic for me, went off well. I received numerous congratulations and compliments. Thanks for the feedback, folks, I appreciate it and I always enjoy contact with our readers and colleagues. I am a bit disappointed in you folks, though. There were 2 glaring errors in my last piece (Common Model Fragments: People and Organizations, April 1998) which no one commented on save for one person. I'll talk about those in this month's installment of Common Model Fragments.

I also want to take this opportunity to publicly thank the folks who contributed to our premiere issue and all issues to come. Without your help, this thing would not exist. We're all busy, and your efforts are appreciated!

Process

As I write this, I am flying to Albuquerque to attend the Natural Language Modeling workshop offered by Dr. Sjir Nijssen and Dr. John Sharp (Sharp Informatics). (Later that week: By the way, the conference was highly informative. If you get a chance to see either John or Sjir present anything on NLM, I highly recommend you attend. More on this in a rant below.) Compound this with a couple of books I have been reading, and I am thinking a lot about process lately. I'm interested in hearing about the processes you folks use when designing your databases. I'm not just talking about methodology or CASE tools here, but how you extract the information to enter into your tool and methods. Sounds like interesting fodder for articles and debate, huh? See below.

Submissions

This, being a professional journal, survives on submissions from professionals (that would probably be you). You don't have to be a Pulitzer Prize winning author or even a guru to share your knowledge and contribute. If you are interested in contributing to our journal, please see the author information area.

Shameless and Self-Serving Promotion

InConcept will be at the Second Annual Visio Solutions Conference from May 10th to May 13th in Seattle, WA. We'll also be hosting an exhibition booth in the solutions showcase area. If you are attending the conference, please stop by and say "hi". You can meet our staff or just pick up some propaganda. If nothing else, stop by for the freebies and let us know how you like our website and the JCM! Last I heard, there were still plenty of "seats" left for this conference, so if you want to come, contact Visio ASAP.

InConcept is also hosting an Object-Role Modeling Workshop in Minneapolis, MN during the month of June.

Etc., Etc.

Don't forget about some other great resources available to you. InConcept hosts a couple of chat areas and a WWW forum. I'd still like to organize some regular chat sessions, if anyone is interested, please let me know. I think this would be a great way for us to contact and communicate as well as share ideas and help each other out. If you would be interested in such scheduled events, please e-mail me with your preferred times, days, and frequency. We can also use this technology to host online "lectures" or Q&A sessions as well. It's open to the public and absolutely free, so take advantage of it!

Rants, Rants, and more Rants

Hmmm…. No one yelled at me last month, so we'll do this again.

Rant One: I did get many responses to my last rant about the lack of an evaluation edition of InfoModeler. It seems I'm not alone in mourning its demise. However, please do not contact me to obtain a copy of this elusive beast. Neither InConcept, nor I distribute InfoModeler; we leave that task to the better-suited Visio Corporation and it's authorized resellers. I can say that if you are pretty sure you are going to buy this tool but just wanted to evaluate it first, or if you want to upgrade to the "Enterprise Edition" (version 3.1 with all database drivers), its hard to go wrong at the price they are offering (approximately one-sixth the non-upgrade price of the "old" product). Contact Visio for more details.

That gives me an idea…. If Visio doesn't want to release an evaluation edition, perhaps they should think about some sort of trial offer? But perhaps that isn't such a great idea if you consider software pirating issues. Oh, that reminds me of a rant….

Rant Two: InConcept's most famous deviant, Pat, got himself a new laptop. I was over at his house the other day and was helping him set it up (Pat sometimes tries to lick the charged batteries, so we have to watch him). One of the pieces of software he wanted to install was, of course, Visio Professional version 5.0. Now Pat had himself an "upgrade" disk. Upon installing the software, I was prompted for the serial number of a qualifying upgrade product.

You have to understand something about Pat: he compulsively buys software. Up in his office, under a precarious mound of software boxes, he had no fewer than 3 older versions of Visio, boxes, manuals, and install disks; but no serial number.

'No problem', I think to myself, 'I can get it from the copy of Visio 4.0 installed on his desktop, right?'

Wrong! Unlike virtually any other piece of software out there, selecting "Help -> About" doesn't give you any useful information about serial numbers or product ID's. To compound the problem, both of the older versions of Visio (3.0 and 4.0) had file corruption problems (don't you just love old, magnetic media?) when I tried to install the older product just so I could get the newer product to install. The third product, Visio Home, who's serial number we did have (ironically), was not a qualifying upgrade product. I had to hack it to get it to install (and no, don't bother writing me to ask how I did it, I don't dig software piracy.) Note to Visio: put the serial numbers some other place that is less likely to get lost, like maybe the manual itself or the "About" screen.

Rant Three: Rumor has it that the folks who make the methodologically impaired CASE tool, ERWin, have come to their senses and will be supporting ORM soon.

Well, not really… If you believed that, you apparently didn't see our little joke….

I have it from reliable sources at Visio that more than a couple people asked for verification on our little prank. All I have to say on the matter is "APRIL FOOLS (belated)!" I'd also like to thank Visio Corporation for not suing me for libel and for taking this in good stride (they didn't even slap me for giving Logic Works a good idea). However, I am due in Seattle in a few days, so maybe they are withholding my wedgie until they can deliver it in person.

Rant Four: Last month, it may have seemed that I was a little hard on Visio, but that was not my intention. I was attempting to inform while also brainwashing everyone else with my opinions. This month, I'd like to rant a bit to their advantage.

I do have the greatest hope that they will make InfoModeler, in whatever form it finally gets released in, into a stellar CASE tool. I have confidence that the former InfoModelers, Inc. folks now at Visio will not let this product die. InfoModelers, was a company that seemed more intent on selling itself than its product. However, what made InfoModelers, Inc a company to pay attention to, in my opinion, were its product and its people; both of which they (and likewise, we) still have. Further, I don't think Visio is looking for anyone to acquisition them. (Side note: I'm not just blowing sunshine when I compliment the InfoModeler staffers, they offered great support and seemed to care a bit about the product and how we were using it. I think Visio got themselves some great employees, and I hope they don't blow it! There… that ought to get me a free beer or two when I get to Seattle! <wink, wink>)

Rant Five: I just attended the Natural Language Modeling workshop hosted by Dr. John Sharp (regular author of the JCM) and Dr. Sjir Nijssen (one of the founding fathers of the ORM, or, as it was known then, NIAM methodology). These 2 guys had a lot of interesting things to offer, and NLM is an interesting approach. It does make an ORM bigot a little queasy, however, in the fact that they no longer need elementary facts. However, after a couple of days and a swallow or two of Maalox (the salsa in them parts is a bit hotter than up here in the north), I got over that. I still have to see how I can fit this into our regular technique, but I am sure it can be done. I think NLM will be extremely valuable when it comes to documentation and picking out facts from a subject area that you may not know. John also has a matrix technique that can be used to validate your facts and root out relationships even if you don't have a clue what the subject area is (but do have a significant population of "good" data). For more on this, see John's articles or his monthly problem (a feature we are introducing this month). I highly recommend you check into this stuff, but do yourself a favor and keep an open mind. Stay tuned, you'll hear more about this stuff, I guarantee it.

Rant Six: One epiphany I came to while attending the NLM workshop is that the term "business rule" is an over-used buzzword. NLM separates such "rules" into five categories: sentence patterns, constraints, derivation rules, exchange rules, and event rules. If you think about your business in this way, you will make a better model: period. Too many constraints are missing from models because people call them "business rules" and decide to let the application interface sort them out. You can do that, of course, but then you'll just end up paying someone like InConcept to come in and clean up the mess later.

Go ahead…. We don't mind.

Given that I hate buzzwords anyway, I call on you to form a new paradigm and quit dialoguing (on-line or off-line) with your internal customers about the business rules of your Java-enabled data warehouse. Uh oh…. Spewing that out makes me want to get a lobotomy and buy a Lexus (or a Range Rover).

I better quit while I'm ahead.

Preface

We have another great set of content for you this month. Dr. Anthony Bloesch gives us another installment of InfoModeler tips. Dr. Terry Halpin continues his series on the differences between ORM and UML. Dr John Sharp shows us a bit more about NLM and offers a discussion about surrogate keys. John Miller continues his column, Just The Facts, with a discussion of elementary facts. Pat Hallock talks a bit more about Object Relational mapping an ORM model. You also get to watch me publicly slap myself for last month's Common Model Fragments. And Dr. John Sharp introduces a monthly analysis problem.

Scot A. Becker is a software consultant and the founder of Orthogonal Software Corporation. He is also a certified ORM consultant and trainer, a certified Visio trainer, and former Editor of the Journal of Conceptual Modeling.

Contact Information:

Scot A. Becker
Orthogonal Software Corporation
scot@orthogonalsoftware.com
www.orthogonalsoftware.com