TABLE OF CONTENTS To be useful, the semantic information you've collected, whether it is from interviews or from existing data or data definitions, must be organized and presented. A fully expressed semantic model of anything at an enterprise level is quite complex. This chapter deals with issues in recording, organizing, and rendering a complex semantic model in a way that is understandable by humans and deployable in systems.
In Chapter 9 we showed where semantics lurk and some structured ways of uncovering them. We'll start this chapter with some techniques for capturing and cataloging the semantics. After that we'll deal with organizing and presenting the semantics.
In practice, the elicitation and representation of semantics greatly overlap. I have separated them into different chapters to focus on each.
Capturing the semantics is primarily a matter of expressing the terms, facts, and relationships in a standard syntax. To make this more tangible, we'll use a single concrete example throughout the rest of this chapter.
Bill Swets is something of an institution in the Fort Collins area. His business is real, but I have made up these systems, because he has what may be the most semantically straightforward business imaginable. Bill has been welding sculptures from surplus car and tractor parts for more than 20 years (Figure 10.1). He occasionally sells one of his creations, and he has set up a park where families can enjoy the sculptures and have a picnic. The "zoo," as he calls it, is supported by anonymous...
