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Revised Dec 2 2008:: many new links

A Spot of Philosophy

Conceptual modeling has two disticnt aspects: one os concepts and the other is modeling. That may sound trivial, but within that statemnt are complexities and important consequences. One can be come almost mysitcal about it.

The central problem is that to some extent, concepts are always concepts and models are models and never the two shall meet, except by considerable effort and a willing to gloss over the details a bit. As the old maxim, "the map is not the territory" is very true, how do we get from one place to the next on a dark and stormy night without falling off a cliff. The map is all we know about the terriory, so what's the difference.

Getting Down to Brass Tacks

One of the most concrete introductions to the abstractions of conceptual modeling is a presentation by John Mylopoulos, a pioneer in high level models and tools - Conceptual Modeling for Knowledge Management ( PDF, >1 Meg ).