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Events & News

19 November: ORM 2008 Workshop Presentations  The ORM 2008 workshop was held in Monterrey, Mexico 12-14 November 2008.  The introduction, programme and first presentation were posted to the ORM 2008 folder in the Library. The remainder of the presentations will be posted to this folder as they are received from the participants. This was first ORM Workshop to be attended by representatives from China. 
 
21 October: NORMA tutorials consolidated The NORMA tutorials are now available for download from a new "NORMA Tutorials" folder in the "Tools" section of the Library. This folder also contains articles on report generation, error message control and object-re-use.
 
15 October: ORM Lite documentation now available  Documentation that describes the new open-source ORM Lite tool is now available for download from the tools section of the Library. 
 
25 September: ORM 2008 Workshop Program announced  The Program for the ORM 2008 workshop is now available for download from the Library. Look in the Events/ORM 2008 folder.
 
20 September: NORMA Tutorial 6 - Name generation  This tutorial explains NORMA's name management features. The tutorial shows you how to rename tables, columns and much more. The file is now available in the NORMA section of the library. 
 
22 August: NORMA User Guide A user guide for NORMA is now available in the Library - NORMA section. The document was prepared by Gordon Everest at the University of Minnesota. Gordon uses this guide as part of his Advanced Database Design class.
 
29 July: NORMA Tutorial (Lab 1) July update An updated version of the "NORMA Lab 1" introductory tutorial is now available in the Library.  
 
17 July: You can now participate in The Great Experiment!   If you know UML or if you know ER and UML or if you know ORM and UML, you can make an important contribution to a unique experiment that seeks an answer to the question  " Is ORM at least 25% more effective than ER or UML based approaches? " Read more on the Surveys page. 
 
7 July: Final Call for Papers ORM 2008 The final call for papers is now in the ORM 2008 section of the library. The deadline for submission is now 10 July. Notification date is deferred to 15 August.  
 
10 June: New release of NORMA   A new release of NORMA is now available for download from the Library. This version includes: Improved column name generation, the Fact Type editor now allows object type names to be entered directly without predicates, Objectification of unary fact types, Improved foreign key references, Fact Type path is now shown in the verbalization browser, Inproved check clause generation, Linq to SQL mapping (VS 2008 version only) and a basic Barker ER view has also been added.
 
30 May: Updated version of NORMA Lab 4   An updated version of the November 2007 Lab 4 is now available for download from the library. This lab covers adding frequency constraints, ring constraints, subtyping, subtype definitions and constraints and textual constraints.
 
29 May: Updated version of NORMA Lab 3   An updated version of the November 2007 Lab 3 is now available for download from the library. This lab covers adding pages, nesting, independent object types, set-comparison constraints and setting data types.
 
27 May: Updated version of NORMA Lab 2   An updated version of the November 2007 Lab 2 is now available for download from the library. This lab covers: ternary associations,  inclusive-or constraints , external uniqueness constraints, renaming pages,  derived fact types and value constraints.
 
24 May: Design or Description survey - Interim report  An interim report of the findings of the design or description survey is now available for download from the "ORM Research" section of the Library.
 
23 May: Updated version of NORMA Lab 1   An updated version of the November 2007 Lab 1 is now available for download from the library. This lab shows you how to enter a simple object-role model, generate a relational view, generate DDL and generate other code such as C# and VB. Updates of the other NORMA labs will be posted over the next few days.
 
 
21 May: ORM 2008 workshop - updated call for papers -  An updated call for papers for the ORM 2008 workshop is now available for download from the ORM 2008 section in the Library.
 
7 May: New version of NORMA released.
 
A new release of NORMA is now available for download from the Library
 
28 April: New VisioModeler "how to" file  Terry Halpin has kindly provided an updated "how to" file for VisioModeler which you can download from the Library.
 
16 April: ORM 2008 workshop call for papers - Updated  The ORM 2008 workshop will be held in Monterrey, Mexico 9-14 November 2008. Download the call for papers from the ORM 2008 folder in the Library.
 
3 April: New "Getting Started" Forum now available. This new forum allows newcomers to ORM (or just those who want to learn more) to post general questions about any aspect of ORM.
 
17 March:  Survey 1: Is data modeling a design process or a descriptive process?
 
Answer six survey questions by clicking this link:  http://ormfoundation.info/fs1/fs-DescribeOrDesign.aspx  The survey is open for contributions until 31 May 2008. Interim results will be published in the Library and available to registered members. Final results will be emailed to all participants. You can also vote in the quick poll in the surveys forum.
 
8 March:  About 600 posts added to the NORMA forum.  The NORMA discussions from SourceForge have been migrated to this website which is now the home of for NORMA discussions. Kevin Owen of Neumont wrote the awesome script that enabled the migration. Thanks Kevin!
 
4 March: New Release of NORMA software.  The March 2008 version of the NORMA software is available for download from the library. There are two versions - one for Visual Studio 2005 and one for Visual Studio 2008.
 
22 February: Terry Halpin's new ORM book published.  You can order Terry's new book "Information Modeling and Relational Databases- Second Edition." by clicking on the image below.
 
12 February: ORM 2008 workshop call for papers The ORM 2008 workshop will be held in Monterrey, Mexico 9-14 November 2008. Download the call for papers from the ORM 2008 folder in the Library.
 
16 January: ORM 2007 Presentations  All of the ORM 2007 workshop presentations are available in the Library.
 
30 November: UFO Survey   The Results of the UFO survey at ORM 2007 are available in the Library. The UFO topic is to be discussed in the UFO forum.
 
28 November: Self Registration active.  Click the "Join" button at the top right of the screen. When you join, please complete your personal profile. It helps others to get to know you.

Terry Halpin's PhD Thesis

A link to Terry Halpin's PhD Thesis on ORM is available in the ORM Overview section of the Library 

Books

 
Click an image to see details of the book

        VEA 


 

Second Edition - March 2008



Tools

VEA: The Microsoft ORM tool embedded within Visual Studio (2003 & 2005) can generate a fully attributed and fully normalised entity-relationship (ER) model from an object-role model. The ER model can then be used to generate DDL for several databases including Microsoft Access and Microsoft SQL Server.
This ORM tool can also reverse engineer a database structure into natural language which allows domain experts to validate the database semantics. These functions are fully explained in the Database Modeling book referenced above. Read more in the VEA section in the Library
 

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Welcome!

What is ORM? ORM is an acronym for "Object-Role Modeling" and is a way to build information models from which logical models can be automatically derived. ORM uses the principles of "fact oriented modeling" which has only one data structure (the fact type) but has many constraint types and an easy to understand graphical notation. Many people believe that ORM provides a simpler and more powerful approach to information modeling than other approaches such as Entity-Relationship modeling and UML.

What is the history of ORM?   The roots of ORM can be traced to research into semantic modeling for information systems in Europe during the 1970's. There were many pioneers and this short summary does not by any means mention them all. An early contribution came in 1973 when M Senko wrote about "data structuring" in the IBM Systems Journal. In 1974 JR Abrial contributed an article about "Data Semantics". In June 1975, Eckhard Falkenberg's doctoral thesis was published and in 1976 one of Falkenberg's papers mentions the term "object-role model". In the same year, Sjir Nijssen wrote about "a gross architecture for the next generation database management systems". In 1989  Terry Halpin completed his PhD thesis on ORM and in the same year he co-authored a book with Sjir Nijssen  "Conceptual Schema and Relational Database Design". 

How can I learn more? The authoritative book on ORM is Terry Halpin's 2008 "Big Brown Book" entitled "Information Modeling and Relational Databases - Second Edition". (The first edition was published in 2001). You can order the Big Brown Book by clicking on the "Second Edition" image (see sidebar - Books). You may also read the Library documents and participate in the Forum.

Are there any ORM Tools? The growth of ORM has followed the availability of a series of steadily improving ORM tools. The early ORM tools such as IAST (Control Data) and RIDL* were followed by InfoDesigner, InfoModeler and VisioModeler. When Microsoft bought the Visio Corporation, Microsoft extended the VisioModeler ORM functionality and made it a component of Microsoft Visual Studio called "Microsoft Visio for Enterprise Architects" .

Microsoft's first ORM implementation appeared in the 2003 Enterprise Architects release of Visual Studio as a component called "Microsoft Visio for Enterprise Architects". In the same year, a companion "how to" book was published by Morgan Kaufmann entitled "Database Modeling with Microsoft Visio for Enterprise Architects". (see sidebar) Microsoft has retained the ORM functionality in the high-end version of Visual Studio 2005 and the Morgan Kaufmann book remains a suitable user guide for both versions. 

The next "in the works" Visual Studio ORM tool is called NORMA (Neumont ORM Architect for Visual Studio). You can download NORMA from the Library.   

Forum The Forum is for discussing ORM related topics. Most of the discussions can be viewed by guests but to participate you have to register on the site. Some discussions are not visible to all registered members because they are for specialised sub-groups only. However, if you don't see a topic that you feel should be given its own Forum, please post a message in the "Request a Topic" Forum. Your post should include a title, a description of the scope, how it relates to ORM and why the ORM community will find it of interest.

Library The Library contains ORM related documents from many sources. Most documents are in PDF format but there may also be multimedia file types and software that you can download.

Surveys The survey system is now active and surveys will be posted from time to time.  

Visitors may browse the Library and Forum. Registered members can download documents and participate in the forum discussions. Registration is free - just click on the "Join" button at the top right of the screen and follow the instructions.

Regards
Ken Evans

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