Editing Object–role modeling (section)

== History ==
The roots of ORM can be traced to research into semantic modeling for information systems in Europe during the 1970s. There were many pioneers and this short summary does not by any means mention them all. An early contribution came in 1973 when Michael Senko wrote about "data structuring" in the IBM Systems Journal. In 1974 Jean-Raymond Abrial contributed an article about "Data Semantics". In June 1975, [[Eckhard Falkenberg]]'s doctoral thesis was published and in 1976 one of Falkenberg's papers mentions the term "object–role model".

[[G.M. Nijssen]] made fundamental contributions by introducing the "circle-box" notation for object types and roles, and by formulating the first version of the conceptual schema design procedure. Robert Meersman extended the approach by adding subtyping, and introducing the first truly conceptual query language.

Object role modeling also evolved from the ''Natural language Information Analysis Method'', a methodology that was initially developed by the academic researcher,   [[G.M. Nijssen]] in the Netherlands ([[Europe]]) in the mid-1970s and his research team at the Control Data Corporation Research Laboratory in Belgium, and later at the University of Queensland, Australia in the 1980s. The acronym '''NIAM''' originally stood for "Nijssen's Information Analysis Methodology", and later generalised to "Natural language Information Analysis Methodology" and ''Binary Relationship Modeling'' since G. M. Nijssen was only one of many people involved in the development of the method.<ref>{{cite book |last=Wintraecken |first=J. J. V. R. |date=1990 |orig-year=1987 |title=The NIAM information analysis method: theory and practice |series=Translation of: Informatie-analyse volgens NIAM |location=Dordrecht; Boston |publisher=[[Kluwer Academic Publishers]] |isbn=079230263X |oclc=19554537 |doi=10.1007/978-94-009-0451-4 |s2cid=30209824 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iJaqCAAAQBAJ}}</ref>

In 1989, [[Terry Halpin]] completed his PhD thesis on ORM, providing the first full formalization of the approach and incorporating several extensions.

Also in 1989, [[Terry Halpin]] and [[G.M. Nijssen]] co-authored the book "Conceptual Schema and Relational Database Design" and several joint papers, providing the first formalization of object–role modeling.

A graphical NIAM design tool which included the ability to generate database-creation scripts for Oracle, DB2 and DBQ was developed in the early 1990s in Paris. It was originally named Genesys and was marketed successfully in France and later Canada. It could also handle ER diagram design. It was ported to SCO Unix, SunOs, DEC 3151's and Windows 3.0 platforms, and was later migrated to succeeding [[Microsoft]] operating systems, utilising XVT for cross operating system graphical portability. The tool was renamed OORIANE and is currently being used for large data warehouse and SOA projects.

Also evolving from NIAM is "''Fully Communication Oriented Information Modeling''" [[FCO-IM]] (1992). It distinguishes itself from traditional ORM in that it takes a strict communication-oriented perspective. Rather than attempting to model the domain and its essential concepts, it models the communication in this domain (universe of discourse). Another important difference is that it does this on instance level, deriving type level and object/fact level during analysis.

Another recent development is the use of ORM in combination with standardised relation types with associated roles and a standard [[machine-readable dictionary]] and [[Taxonomy (general)|taxonomy]] of concepts as are provided in the [[Gellish English]] dictionary. Standardisation of relation types (fact types), roles and concepts enables increased possibilities for model integration and model reuse.