Object-Role Modeling: Principles and Benefits

  • Authors:
  • Terry Halpin

  • Affiliations:
  • LogicBlox, Australia, and INTI Education Group, Malaysia

  • Venue:
  • International Journal of Information System Modeling and Design
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

Object-Role Modeling ORM is an approach for modeling and querying information at the conceptual level, and for transforming ORM models and queries to or from other representations. Unlike attribute-based approaches such as Entity-Relationship ER modeling and class modeling within the Unified Modeling Language UML, ORM is fact-oriented, where all facts and rules are modeled in terms of natural sentences easily understood and validated by nontechnical business users. ORM's modeling procedure facilitates validation by verbalization and population with concrete examples. ORM's graphical notation is far more expressive than that of ER diagrams or UML class diagrams, and its attribute-free nature makes it more stable and adaptable to changing business requirements. This article explains the fundamentals of ORM, illustrates some of its advantages as a data modeling approach, and outlines some recent research to extend ORM, with special attention to mappings to deductive databases.