Information modeling example

You know about our horses Mimosa and Carayllio? What if we use them as an Information modeling example?

We will go through business terms, conceptual information model, semantic relations and implementation into systems, using our horses as an example.

Business terms and glossary

Carayllio is a horse, with an owner, living at a stable owned by an organisation. He has a passport issued by an organisation that is used for identification and tracking of vaccinations, medical condition as well as parents (stallion & mare).

His breed is Swedish Warm Blood, SWB, and he is now a gelding. (The other two genders are stallion and mare). A breeder is the organization or individual who owned him when he was born.

He has been competing nationally in show jumping, and I plan to compete with him in dressage and working equitation. In order to compete in official competition, the rider need to have a green card issed by Svenska ridsportförbundet and the horse need proper vaccinations. FEI is the international organization if you want to compete internationally.

You compete in a discipline, show jumping, dressage etc, and at a certain level. My first in dressage will be Lätt C: 1 (lång bana) and the level is defined by Ridsportförbundet.

All these term should be in the glossary as they are important if you want compete with your horse.

Information objects

Information object is the IAF artifact to describe a conceptual information model, system agnostic and usable with manual processes.

TM Forum SID is the most mature information model out there. Focused on telecom, so nothing about animals.

My suggestion is that we create a new information object Animal, ABE in TM Forum parlor, that mimics the ABE Individual and Party. Organisation, roles, locations etc using standard SID model.

For vaccinations and medical conditions I would use HL7 that is tailored for health care, including animal treatment.

How to model a competition? Probably as a new information object, closely aligned to SID.

Semantics relationships

The semantics relationship for Carayllio are rather simple, as they are very well documented in TDB (Tävlingsdatabasen) and BLUP ((Stud book)

Life is often more complicated than our systems. Mimosa was a wild horse, with no recorded information until she was captured and examined by a vet when she was five. As sold to Sweden, she needed a passport, but most of the data about her was unavailable or unreliable.

This impact the semantics relationships as we have to manage a non perfect world.

Our third horse Malva is also from Portugal, pure Lucitano, with known orgin, but not in a stud book.

When you describe cardinality in relations, you can’t always assume there are data available.

Data quality

Carayllio, Mimosa and Malva doesn’t care about information quality, they care about the green grass.

Correct information in TDB is my problem, as I would not be able to compete unless it’s (in their view) 100% correct.

Does data quality matter?

I bought an older showjumping horse this spring and got the passport when I took over him.

If you compete in riding in Sweden, you and your horse need to be registered in TDB, i.e. ”Tävlingsdatabasen”. The identity of the horse is the passport and also chip for younger horses.

You can register someone else horse, but you need to show the horse passport at the  arena before allowed to complete. Thus catching any errors or fraudulent behavior.

I didn’t register my newly bought horse until I was to compete, so the data in the system TDB was not up to date for a couple of weeks.

But the are more registers. If you have a pure breed horse, it’s in a stud book. Carayllio is a Swedish Warm Blood, so you can find his data on-line in BLUP.

However, the data there says his is a stallion and the the owner is the breeder. Nobody have updated that registration for near twenty years. His is a gelding now, and have changed ownership several times during the years.

The question is when data quality matters.

For competion, you must have correct data. For breeding, yes you will update the stud book. But who cares otherwise?

The answer is Jordbruksverket who have register of all horse and where they live. But that responsibility lies with the owner of the stable, not the horse owner.

IT is always behind

Brintha wrote about if business or IT is behind on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-business-ready-ten-years-behind-brintha-shanmugalingam-rmhqf

In my view, IT is always behind, this is why we have shadow IT.

Every Excel-file used by businesses is a proof of this. Every manual copy of data between systems. Every manual correction of data in a system is due to IT is behind business. Every privat smartphone running apps not available at work is due to IT a step behind.

The question is not if IT is behind, the real problem for business is when it’s falling even more behind.

Wrong question

Solution architects often focus solely on the tool, the platform or technique.

Nobody asks what Adrienne's thread was made of.

Linen? Hemp? Wool? Perhaps. But that's the wrong question.

The real problem was not to kill Minotauros. It was how to get out of the labyrinth at Knossos, alive. She solved the problem and is still remembered. Not the manufacturer of the thread.

Finding out how to solve the real problem is more important than finding a tool.

Do I need a certification?

For a while, there have been a huge focus on certifications from different vendors, but are they really needed?

For me personally, it’s questionable.

I didn’t get certified in Linux in 1987. Instead I bought a thick book about how to design an operating system, and read it several times. Inter-process communication and dead-locks are still tricky subjects.

I didn’t get a certificate for world wide web in 1989 when I was implementing hypertext at work for system documentation in a production plant.

Neither any certification when I created my first CGI-scripts i C for httpd before Apache was released.

I missed to take ”Datakörkortet” in Sweden, as I was to busy with architecture for a digital music platform in 2000.

For me, when there are certifications in a topic, it’s already mainstream and I’m at the next wave.

One exception to the rule. I was TOGAF certified in 2011, but I’ve been working as an Enterprise Architect since last millennium.