Re: Object-Role Modeling?
From: Dan <dan_at_nospam.com>
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 11:14:13 -0500
Message-ID: <nbwBe.11$8Y1.1563_at_news.uswest.net>
>
>
>
> Comparison of UML and ORM for data modeling (as opposed to application object
> modeling):
> www.orm.net/pdf/JDM99.pdf
>
> From an article by Alan Kotok about modeling for an HR system for 4 million
> employees:
> http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/12/12/kotok.html?page=2
>
> "UML advocates got an even sharper shock when one of the key developers of
> HR-XML spoke at length about the inability of UML to meet the needs of a
> large-scale human resources systems project undertaken by the U.S. Department of
> Defense. Enrique Kortright, of the U.S. Navy Space and Warfare Command's
> Information Technology Center, discussed how the initial modeling of the planned
> Defense Integrated Human Resources System (DIMHRS) ran into problems using UML.
> This project is a large, complex undertaking, eventually serving 3 to 4 million
> employees, with thousands of entry points and concurrent users, and exchanging
> data with finance, education, health care, retirement, and civilian personnel
> systems.
>
> Kortright said the goal of modeling this system was to capture the business
> knowledge of human resource professionals, and like Bob Sutor of IBM, he had to
> evaluate the available standards against the needs of that project. However, he
> found UML limited in its ability to record complex business behavior. Based on
> this experience, he said UML was both too complex and too restrictive and forced
> the modelers to make decisions irrelevant to the overall goals of the project,
> such as classifying professional human resources knowledge between classes and
> attributes. Kortright also discovered that human resources experts could not
> understand the UML notation. The DIMHRS designers ended up using another
> graphical modeling language called Object Role Modeling, which like UML uses a
> graphical notation but is more expressive."
>
>
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 11:14:13 -0500
Message-ID: <nbwBe.11$8Y1.1563_at_news.uswest.net>
On 7/14/2005 2:01 AM, Ken North wrote:
> "Mikito Harakiri" <mikharakiri_nospaum_at_yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1120593464.843425.65810_at_g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
>>Dan wrote: >> >>>As a way to describe a problem domain with end users, why hasn't ORM >>>taken off? From what I have read of it, it seems that it would be the >>>place to start, then tweak on ER layer... >> >>Maybe because ORM/ER were never sucessful as comunnication tool with >>end users? For that matter, were ORM/ER sucessful in anything else?
>
>
>
> Comparison of UML and ORM for data modeling (as opposed to application object
> modeling):
> www.orm.net/pdf/JDM99.pdf
>
> From an article by Alan Kotok about modeling for an HR system for 4 million
> employees:
> http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/12/12/kotok.html?page=2
>
> "UML advocates got an even sharper shock when one of the key developers of
> HR-XML spoke at length about the inability of UML to meet the needs of a
> large-scale human resources systems project undertaken by the U.S. Department of
> Defense. Enrique Kortright, of the U.S. Navy Space and Warfare Command's
> Information Technology Center, discussed how the initial modeling of the planned
> Defense Integrated Human Resources System (DIMHRS) ran into problems using UML.
> This project is a large, complex undertaking, eventually serving 3 to 4 million
> employees, with thousands of entry points and concurrent users, and exchanging
> data with finance, education, health care, retirement, and civilian personnel
> systems.
>
> Kortright said the goal of modeling this system was to capture the business
> knowledge of human resource professionals, and like Bob Sutor of IBM, he had to
> evaluate the available standards against the needs of that project. However, he
> found UML limited in its ability to record complex business behavior. Based on
> this experience, he said UML was both too complex and too restrictive and forced
> the modelers to make decisions irrelevant to the overall goals of the project,
> such as classifying professional human resources knowledge between classes and
> attributes. Kortright also discovered that human resources experts could not
> understand the UML notation. The DIMHRS designers ended up using another
> graphical modeling language called Object Role Modeling, which like UML uses a
> graphical notation but is more expressive."
>
>
I think we all know that most software projects end in failure. I wonder how much of this failure is due to a poor database design which was a result of an impedance mismatch between modeler and end user. Received on Thu Jul 14 2005 - 18:14:13 CEST