use infosphere business glossary to define a common business

Use InfoSphere Business Glossary to define acommon business language among modeling toolsSkill Level: Intermediate

Brian Byrne ([email protected])InfoSphere Integration ArchitectIBM

Jennifer Ramirez ([email protected])Software IT ArchitectIBM

04 Mar 2010

Combining common business language taxonomies with modeling tools encouragesarchitects, modelers, and developers to understand and use commonly understoodbusiness terms, which eliminates the ambiguity that loosely specified language canintroduce. This drives alignment of requirements between IT and businessstakeholders. This article describes how to use InfoSphere™ Business Glossary,Rational® Software Architect, and InfoSphere Data Architect within a specificdevelopment flow to introduce agreed-upon terms into the modeling environments,establishing the correct semantics early in the development cycle. This effortdecreases the cost of development by reducing the churn of getting IT to understandwhat the business requirements really mean.

Introduction

In a large organization with complex analysis, modeling, and development initiativesspread across multiple projects, standardizing business semantics is key. Without away to standardize the meanings and definitions of business concepts, eachanalysis, modeling, or development thread will naturally establish its own semantics.These disparate semantics can compound the already fragmented understanding ofthe relationship between IT assets and the business concepts they support.

For example, the business side of the house might clearly define the term Customer

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Tax Status. This enables each IT initiative that supports Customer Tax Status to usethe defined meaning, which drives consistency of term name, definition, and relatedsemantics across all the IT initiatives. By contrast, in the absence of such astructure, each IT initiative might naturally come to its own conclusion as to whatCustomer Tax Status means and how it should be defined. This can result inmultiple structures, such as Customer Tax Code, Tax Status, Customer Code, all ofwhich loosely imply the same semantics but differ in name and definition.

InfoSphere Business Glossary provides a means to specify business concepts andto manage the relationship among those concepts and the IT structures that supportthem. However, this content is only useful if it is easy to access. For example,without immediate and efficient access to glossary content, model users, includingservice analysts, component designers, and logical data modelers, might ignore theglossary and define their own terms. The glossary content should be available withinthe modeling tools, making the content impossible for the modeler to ignore. Still,there might be complications with model interchange and synchronization asrelationships between model structures and glossary terms must be retained asmodels flow from tool to tool.

This article describes an example use case in which a UML modeler is transformedinto a logical data model (LDM). The following steps describe the flow, as shown inFigure 1.

1. UML modeler uses glossary browser to create new UML structures and toclassify existing ones.

2. Completed UML model is used for two purposes: to drive software/servicedevelopment and as a source for a logical data model.

3. Resulting logical data model retains glossary classifications.

4. Generation to physical data model also retains glossary classifications,ready for publication to metadata server.

5. Derived UML models also retain glossary classifications.

Figure 1. Flow starting with UML

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Transforming an LDM specification to a UML model is an equally valid andsupported use case. Simply reverse the process described in Figure 1 using theLDM-to-UML transform, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Flow starting with LDM

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The high-level steps in Figure 2 are:

1. Data modeler uses the glossary browser to create new UML structuresand to classify existing ones.

2. Completed logical model is used for two purposes: to drive databasedevelopment and as a source for a UML model.

3. Transformed UML model retains glossary classifications.

4. UML model is used to drive software development stack.

5. Generation to physical data retains glossary classifications, ready forpublication to metadata server.

Using the business glossary in RSM and RSA

Complete the following steps to use the InfoSphere Business Glossary within theUML modeling environment.




1. If the glossary is not already configured for the workspace, right-click theroot of the Business Glossary Explorer, and select Preferences. ThePreferences (Filtered) window appears, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Configure connection to a live Business Glossary instance

2. Enter the Host, Username, and Password, and click OK.

3. Click Window > Show View > Other to show the Business GlossaryExplorer window.

4. Click Glossary Explorer, and click OK, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Bringing up the Glossary Explorer




The Glossary Explorer window, as shown in Figure 5, appears on your lower-rightpanel of RSA,

Figure 5. Glossary Explorer




5. Right-click anywhere in this window, and select Update to load newupdates to the glossary.

From the Glossary Explorer, a modeler can perform either of two actions.

• The modeler can drag and drop glossary terms onto existing classes andattributes of the UML model. This establishes a classifying relationshipbetween that UML model element and the glossary term. Figure 6 showsan example of dragging and dropping the business term InvolvedParty from the glossary onto the UML class Involved Party.Repeating this for the terms Participant and Next Of Kin results inthe classification relationships shown at the bottom of Figure 6 (largerimage).Figure 6. Drag and drop terms



http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-1003infospheremodelingtools/sidefile-figure6.html



For the modeler to establish new elements based on the terms in theBusiness Glossary, he simply drags the glossary terms onto the UMLcanvas. A new UML class is created based on the business definition ofthat glossary term. Figure 7 (larger image) shows a new class added bydragging the glossary term Customer.

Figure 7. Creating a new class





• The modeler can add new attributes to an existing class. Figure 8 (largerimage) shows the result of dragging and dropping the term HealthStatus Date to add a new attribute to the Customer class. Therelationship to the originating glossary term is retained.Figure 8. Adding an attribute

Using this approach, the UML modeler has complete freedom to define his model,but he is encouraged to do so in accordance with the agreed business terms andsemantics of the enterprise, as shown in Figure 9. If existing model structures existthat are not already in strict accordance with the glossary, these structures can beclassified using the appropriate glossary terms.

Figure 9. Terms in glossaryAssigned






Constructing a new logical data model

Within the InfoSphere Data Architect environment, the glossary is also availablethrough the same Business Glossary Explorer plugin. To import the UML model andassociated glossary classifications as an LDM, define an instance of transformationfrom UML to LDM, as shown in Figure 10. This is a standard transform that hasbeen updated in the most recent version of IDA to support glossary classification.

Figure 10. Specifying a configuration name and transformation




4. To configure the transform, set the source for the logical data model to bethe UML model or the UML package within the model.




5. Set the target as the IDA project in use, as shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11. Selecting source and target

6. Click Finish. The transformation configuration is defined, as shown inFigure 12.

Figure 12. Finishing and running the transformation configuration




7. To execute the transformation, click Run, which creates an LDM filecorresponding to the UML model, such as Involved Party.ldm.

8. Open the LDM file to see the new and existing UML structures, nowrendered in ER notation, as shown in Figure 13.

Figure 13. Resulting LDM with glossary classifications




The data modeler can then use this LDM file as input to a transformation to DBMand ultimately to DDL to deploy to the database management system (DBMS).During this process, the data modeler often makes extensions or changes to thismodel, which can then be transformed back into a UML model. This synchronizesmodel assets between the worlds of UML and LDM, which are all connected to andclassified by a common business taxonomy within Business Glossary.

For more details on the model management implications of this pattern, seeResources.

Conclusion

These new functions within the modeling platform fundamentally change thecapability of an enterprise to define and control business semantics across variousmodeling domains. These techniques, properly applied, can greatly reduce thevariation in business definitions across modeling efforts, across projects, and acrossline-of-business boundaries.




Resources

Learn

• Go to the InfoSphere area on developerWorks to get the resources you need toadvance your skills in on InfoSphere products.

• Learn more about InfoSphere Business Glossary.

• Explore further by reading "Developing a Web 2.0 application using theInfoSphere Business Glossary REST API" (developerWorks, Jul 2009), which isa step-by-step guide to developing a widget that uses the InfoSphere BusinessGlossary REST API and enables users to find terms, examine the term's details,and make basic edits.

• Refer to the article "Governing and managing enterprise models, Part 1:Introduction and concepts" (developerWorks, Jan 2009) to better understandgovernance and management of enterprise models.

• Check out "Integrating heterogeneous metadata" (developerWorks, Sep 2009)for usage scenarios for integrating Cognos Business Intelligence reports andInfoSphere Business Glossary.

• Refer to "The value and use of InfoSphere Business Glossary in SOA design"(developerWorks, Oct 2008) to learn how InfoSphere Business Glossary andthe unified metadata management of InfoSphere Information Server can beused in an SOA engagement.

• Learn more about Information Management at the developerWorks InformationManagement zone. Find technical documentation, how-to articles, education,downloads, product information, and more.

• Stay current with developerWorks technical events and webcasts.

Get products and technologies

• Download IBM product evaluation versions or explore the online trials in theIBM SOA Sandbox and get your hands on application development tools andmiddleware products from DB2®, Lotus®, Rational®, Tivoli®, andWebSphere®.

Discuss

• Participate in the discussion forum for this content.

• Check out the developerWorks blogs and get involved in the developerWorkscommunity.

About the authors



http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/products/infosphere/index.html

http://www.ibm.com/software/data/infosphere/business-glossary/

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-0909infosphererest/index.html

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-0909infosphererest/index.html

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/09/0113_letkeman-norris/

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/09/0113_letkeman-norris/

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-0907metadataintegration/index.html

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-0802sauter2/index.html

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/offers/techbriefings/

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/soasandbox/

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/soasandbox/

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=831

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community


Brian ByrneBrian Byrne has over 10 years experience in the design and development ofdistributed systems, spending 7 years driving the architecture of Industry Modelsacross a range of industries. Brian is currently an architect within IBM's InformationManagement organization.

Jennifer RamirezJennifer Ramirez has over 20 years of experience in IT, focusing the last 10 years onsoftware integration.




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