by Kevin R. Cook >> Tue, 17 Jul 2001 23:23:18 GMT
Recently while looking for a way to document all the 'facts' of our problem domain I came across these websites that promote the use of Conceptual modeling as a preliminary step to OO modeling. At first I thought that's all I need another tool. But after reading papers on the following two websites (www.orm.net and www.inconcept.com ) I thought it might be worth a try. Reluctant at first (especially since the tool is an unsupported Visio product from Microsoft) but in one short week my domain experts have modeled hundreds of facts about our relatively complex business (Pension plan administration). They use a property sheet to type in natural English (American?) to establish the 'facts'. The model is drawn automatically from these facts.
So now my domain experts using a few features of a complex tool, simple to use and in natural English modelling.
I take the model and interogate them for clarification and now I have thebegin nings of an OO case diagram.
At the very least this free Visio tool is a phenomenally well organized "requirements gathering" tool of sorts.
From all my attempts to get my experts to model all our business concepts, I've never seen them adopt a tool so fast and make so much progress in such a short time.
If you are doing any kind of OO modelling I recommend you check this out.
The ORM page (www.orm.net) and the Journal of Conceptual Modelling page (http://www.inconcept.com/JCM/index.html)
If anyone already has expericene with this methodology, I'm eager to hear from you.
Kevin R. Cook
Summit Benefit