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RE: RDF or UML (Was RE: XML and Healthcare,RDF spec bug was: Re:Default

• From: johns@s... (John F. Schlesinger)
• To: 'Jonathan Borden' <jborden@m...>,"'Bullard, Claude L (Len)'" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 11:03:59 -0400

Sergey wrote (in correspondence with John Borden):

"How would you define a class say Person and serialize an instance of Person
in XMI? Maybe I'm missing something..."

This does seem to me to be missing something.

XMI is for interchanging metadata, that is models, not for creating
instances of classes (which would be code). Here is what 6.1 of the UML 1.3
specification says (my emphasis):

"The OMG XMI standard specifies a structure for interchanging _models_ that
uses XML. The XMI DTD generated for UML is a physical mechanism for
interchanging UML _models_ conforming to the UML _metamodel_."

If I have a model that includes the class Person, what I serialize using XMI
is the class definition Person (among other things). This allows me, for
instance, to store the model in a repository (the MS Repository say) or to
import the model into another tool (from Rational Rose to Visual UML say).

Once I have the model, I can use it to generate code in VB, Java, C++,
Eiffel etc. Once I have the code, I have an instance of the class Person.

The same is true for modeling data in IDEF1X - an instance of an entity in
the model is a table, not part of the model. What is serialized using XMI is
the entity definition.

If Sergey is asking how to serialize the definition then here is the XMI for
a class Person (adapted from the XMI Toolkit example) that has an attribute
"name":

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <XMI xmi.version="1.1" timestamp="Sun Oct 10 14:06:54 PDT 1999">
     <XMI.header>
       <XMI.documentation>
         <XMI.exporter>XMI Example</XMI.exporter>
         <XMI.exporterVersion>1.05</XMI.exporterVersion>
       </XMI.documentation>
     </XMI.header>
     <XMI.content>
       <Person xmi.id="_1">
         <Person.name>
           <Name xmi.id="_1.1"/>
         </Person.name>
       </Person>
     </XMI.content>
   </XMI>

Yours,
John F Schlesinger
SysCore Solutions
212 619 5200 x 219
917 886 5895 Mobile

-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Borden [mailto:jborden@m...]
Sent: Friday, July 21, 2000 9:53 AM
To: Bullard, Claude L (Len)
Cc: xml-dev@l...
Subject: Re: RDF or UML (Was RE: XML and Healthcare,RDF spec bug was:
Re: Default Namespaces - why don't they apply toattributes?)


Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
> How does RDF stack up next to UML for modeling semantics?
>
see:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-interest/2000May/0154.html

Jonathan Borden
http://www.openhealth.org

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