Information Modeling in UML and ORM

Abstract

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) was adopted by the Object Management Group (OMG) in 1997 as a language for object-oriented (OO) analysis and design. After several minor revisions, a major overhaul resulted in UML version 2.0 (OMG, 2003), and the language is still being refined. Although suitable for object-oriented code design, UML is less suitable for information analysis, since it provides only weak support for the kinds of business rules found in data-intensive applications. Moreover, UML’s graphical language does not lend itself readily to verbalization and multiple instantiation for validating data models with domain experts.