ORM Practicality

   In this example there are several "domains" or areas of domain. One of them entails a game, another a child, person, animal and so on. The idea here is that I can explain the domain by simply stating the facts. For instance, Child plays Game with Child. I haven't mentioned anything about the T-Rex or a birthdate, just that single fact. It's nice to be able to state the facts in plain English. But where some might say ORM misses is in its visual context. Notice how spread out I need to make the model. While this model is fairly small in comparison to most database domains, imagine what a daunting task it would be to organize an large model!

    Visual imagery. Most people can explain their ideas, concepts, visions with imagery. "I want it to do this." "It should look something like this" It's hard enough for entrepreneurs and business owners to explain their ideas as users, it gets even harder with ORM. Of course, this is why we have a distinct role for people who use ORM. And the only communication that actually occurs is in facts being stated, verifying certain roles.. etc. Of course, there is the possibility that facts are going to be left out (that's always a possibility). In a brainstorming session, there is a definitive point in time where certain constraints are simply meaningless, the important part of brainstorming is to gather information and be able to track it in its databound form.

    So what to people do? Whiteboards are one way, so is the simple pencil and paper, OneNote, Word docs... the list is endless for this. Eventually though, those models have to come in some fashion that can be reused. While ORM does provide a step in generating database models, it and most of the database community leaves out the ability to visualize concepts, create them and use them almost immediately.

    Collective information, is all about throwing in facts or assumed facts (to which you verify later) and then being able to use that information in its visual representation. Imagine drawing a piece of paper, it's a small piece of paper with some lines on it. You label it as a post. Then imagine copying those a bunch and putting a bundle together, you label this pile a blog. Then you draw a person, whom you care deeply about. Who is this person? Why this person is a user. A user who wishes to use your system and can only hope it does what they want! You can continue to add to this drawing by looking closely at the post. You erase the squiggly lines and add detail, there's a title in here, some content, the date is was posted and a few comments.

    In this example we don't care about what each post is identified by; we don't care how many characters the title should be before it's cut off. Sometimes we just need to get a basic idea down on paper, imagine how enthralled we would be if our ideas became instant reality before our vary eyes. We don't know exactly the path we want, we don't know all the facts, but we have a concept, our data in visual form almost immediately.