Conceptual Formalization
SBVR is a landmark for the OMG, the first OMG specification to incorporate the formal use of natural language in modeling and the first to provide explicitly a model of formal logic. Based on a fusion of linguistics, logic, and computer science, and two years in preparation, SBVR provides a way to capture specifications in natural language and represent them in formal logic so they can be machine-processed.
Methodologies used in software development are typically applied only when a problem is already formulated and well described. The actual difficulty lies in the previous step, that is describing problems and expected functionalities. Stakeholders involved in software development can express their ideas using a language very close to them, but they usually are not able to formalize these concepts in a clear and unambiguous way. This implies a large effort in order to interpret and understand real meanings and concepts hidden among stakeholders' words. Special constraints on syntax or predefined linguistic structures can be used in order to overcome this problem, enabling natural language to well represent and formally define problems and requirements.
The main purpose of natural language modelling is hence to make natural language suitable for conceptual modelling. The focus is on semantic aspects and shared meanings, while syntax is thought in a perspective based on formal logic mapping.
Conceptualization and representation play fundamental roles in thinking, communicating, and modeling. For each concept there is a triad of 1) the concept in our minds, 2) the real-world things conceptualized by the concept, and 3) a representation of the concept that we can use to think and communicate about the concept and its corresponding real-world things. (Note that real-world things include both concrete things and representations of those concrete things as records and processes in operational information systems.)
A conceptual model is a formal structure representing a possible world, comprising a conceptual schema and a set of facts that instantiate the conceptual schema. The conceptual schema is a combination of concepts and facts of what is possible, necessary, permissible, and obligatory in each possible world. The set of facts instantiates the conceptual schema by assertion to describe one possible world. A rule is a fact that asserts either a logical necessity or an obligation. Obligations are not necessarily satisfied by the facts; necessities are always satisfied.
SBVR contains a vocabulary for conceptual modeling and captures expressions based on this vocabulary as formal logic structures. The SBVR vocabulary allows one to formally specify representations of concepts, definitions, instances, and rules of any knowledge domain in natural language, including tabular forms. These features make SBVR well suited for describing business domains and requirements for business processes and information systems to implement business models.
Read more about this topic: Semantics Of Business Vocabulary And Business Rules
Famous quotes containing the word conceptual:
“‘Pure experience’ is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.”
—William James (1842–1910)