[ebxml-dev] Synchronize the UML with a data dictionary?

[Todd Boyle <tboyle@rosehill.net>]

It is a bit frustrating to work with the Core Components when
you realize the Core Components are really authored in UML
and the UML is the master model.

I guess I am disappointed by the lack of UML integration with
metadata registries.   I asked Richard Soley, head of the OMG
at the Interop in Orlando Thursday, "how should we maintain our
software, based on a UML model within an MDA approach when
our vocabulary comes from open standards like Core Components?  "

He seemed to say,

- ISO 11179 and Core Components catalog cannot achieve portability.
- they can hardly achieve interoperability.
- a data schema, also, is not sufficient to create an API.
- the UML should generate the APIs.
- a data dictionary does not really exist, it is a view of the UML.

- see CWM, for federating data warehouses.
http://www.omg.org/technology/cwm/

I confess as a newbie I need to read much more about that and
the MOF.

But if a software engineer is required to interoperate globally,
with a registry of data elements like the ebXML Core Components
or a 11179 metadata registry, the software engineer is responsible
to read and study the global dictionary, search and discover the
appropriate data elements, and decide whether to include them
in their OMG MDA UML model, on an individual basis?

The idea seems to be that OMG software engineers view their
models as supreme owners of data elements and their meanings.
Like, there is not a two-way street--they don't need no steenkin' global
vocabularies.  The OMG doesn't even provide an option to
"synchronize" my elements with a RegRep, do they?

TOdd