[ARCHIVE] International Workshop on Fact-Oriented Modeling (ORM 2009)

Vilamoura, Portugal
November 4-6, 2009

Held in conjunction with OTM’09 (Nov 1-6)
http://www.onthemove-conferences.org/

Proceedings will be published by Springer Verlag

Paper Submission Deadline: 2009 July 5th
(abstracts due July 2nd)

  
Background

Following successful workshops held in Cyprus (2005), France (2006), Portugal (2007), and Mexico (2008), this is the fifth 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
  • 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 

Herman Balsters
University of Groningen
The Netherlands 


Important Dates (2009)

 

  • Abstracts Submission Deadline:  June 22, 2009   EXTENDED DEADLINE July 2, 2009 - 23:59 CET
  • Paper Submission Deadline: June 29, 2009   EXTENDED DEADLINE July 5, 2009 - 23:59 CET
  • Acceptance Notification: August 05, 2009
  • Camera ready received: August 15, 2009
  • Registration Deadline: August 20, 2009
  • OTM 2009 event: November 1-6, 2009


Submission Guidelines

All submitted papers will be evaluated by at least three members of the program committee, based on originality, significance, technical soundness, and clarity of expression. Submissions must be in English, and may discuss industrial experience and/or academic research. Papers should not exceed 5,000 words (excluding references and appendices), and should not exceed 10 pages in the final camera-ready format (see later). Papers are normally allocated 45 minutes for presentation. Only electronic submissions in Adobe PDF format are acceptable. The paper submission site will be advised later.

Paper Submission site: http://www.onthemove-conferences.org/index.php/submitpaper/ormsub/

On the original submission, include a cover page with title of paper as well as the authors’ names, affiliations, phones, faxes, and email addresses. The total number of words in the paper (excluding cover page, tables, and references) should be indicated on the cover page. The second page should begin with the title of the paper followed by author names and affiliations and an abstract of no more than 150 words.

The proceedings will be published by Springer Verlag in their LNCS (Lecture Notes in Computer Science) series. The final paper (if accepted) should be formatted using the Springer LNCS style, as described at http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html. Failure to commit to presentation at the workshop automatically excludes a paper from the proceedings.
   

Program committee

Dick Barden, Boston Scientific, USA
Herman Balsters, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Scott Becker, Orthogonal Software, USA
Linda Bird, Independent Contractor, Australia
Anthony Bloesch, Microsoft Corporation, USA
Peter Bollen, Maastricht University, The Netherlands
Lex Bruil, ING, Netherlands
Andy Carver, Neumont University, USA
Donald Chapin, Business Semantics, UK
Matthew Curland, LogicBlox, USA
Dave Cuyler, Sandia National Laboratories, USA
Necito Dela Cruz, Boston Scientific, USA
Olga De Troyer, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Jan Dietz, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Gordon Everest, University of Minnesota, USA
Ken Evans, ORM Foundation and University of Lincoln, UK
Mario Gutknecht, Commerzbank, Frankfurt, Germany
John Hall, Model Systems, UK
Pat Hallock, InConcept, USA
Terry Halpin, LogicBlox, Australia
Clifford Heath, Data Constellation, Australia
Stijn Hoppenbrouwers, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Mike Jackson, Birmingham City University, United Kingdom
Mustafa Jarrar, University of Cyprus, Cyprus
Inge Lemmens, PNA, The Netherlands
Tony Morgan, Neumont University, USA
Maurice Nijssen, PNA, The Netherlands
Baba Piprani, SICOM, Canada
Erik Proper, Radboud University and Capgemini, The Netherlands
Ron Ross, Business Rules Solutions, USA
Gerhard Skagestein, University of Oslo, Norway
Sylvie Spreeuwenberg, LibRT, The Netherlands
Peter Spyns, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Kurt Stirewalt, LogicBlox, USA
Serge Valera, European Space Agency, The Netherlands
Jan Vanthienen, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Jos Vos, ABP/AMC, Heerlen, The Netherlands
Theo van der Weide, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

For more information on the workshop, please contact:

Dr Terry Halpin
e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it