CaseTalk - Gentle Introductions

The Journey from 'Customer → Order' to a Formal Semantic Layer

Consider five ways to represent the same business reality:

Customer → Order
Customer has Order
Customer buys Order
The person <customer no> places order <order no>.
"The person or organisation, identified in our system as customer number 123, placed an order for our products or services identified by order number 20260991."

The final expression isn't just "better documentation"—it's the foundation of a semantic layer: a formal, structured representation of business knowledge that sits between your SMEs' expertise and your data systems. This semantic layer is the result of applying FCO-IM (Fully Communication-Oriented Information Modeling), not just an improvement in notation.

The added value of FCO-IM over other Fact-based Methods, for the business is its direct anchoring in business communication, which makes models easier to validate, more traceable, less biased, and more adaptable. This reduces risk, increases stakeholder involvement, and improves compliance — all of which translate to lower project costs and higher business confidence in IT outcomes.

Are you looking for an effective way to represent your business data? Database views are the perfect solution! A database view is a select statement that is run on tables to fetch meaningful data for some application. With views, you can easily represent meaningful business concepts. But which business concepts should be represented by tables, and which by views?

ChatGPT logo Instead of explaining the ins and outs of elementary fact expressions, this article is a copy of the dialog held with ChatGPT about it. It was very quickly catching on, and along the way learned how to correct the mistakes. It is a very insightful session, and we consider it to be of help to our novice readers. Enjoy the read, and let us know what you think. (The article is only altered in layout to break down the directions in which the session heads.)

Do you know what an elementary fact expression is?

I'm not certain what you mean by "elementary fact expression," as the term is not a commonly used one in natural language or in any specific field of study. Can you please provide more context or information so I can better understand what you are asking?

FCO-IM explained in a single image. From natural language communication to system design and implementation.