PLANLOFT — PLANLOFT Schema — Alpha Release Announcement — Julian M.N. BourneHomeContents1. Why2. What3. How4. Where5. UsePLANLOFT Schema — Alpha Release AnnouncementJulian M.N. BournePLANLOFT2015-03-09 PLANLOFT Schema is a web browser application that edits and shares ORM (Object Role Modeling) diagrams. It was released 2015-02-16 in alpha form for free use and experimentation on our cloud-based infrastructure. 1. Why § Designing and documenting data models is a major part of successfully sharing and collaborating on information. PLANLOFT Schema <http://planloft.net/> provides a visual way of communicating the structure and rules of data, using ORM <http://www.orm.net/>-like (Object Role Modeling) diagrams. § 2. What § ORM is a form of data modeling from the Fact Based Modeling school of thought. PLANLOFT Schema allows its ORM-like models and data to be exported to OWL <http://www.w3.org/OWL/>/RDF so they can be checked for logical consistency using reasoners. § ORM's main advantage is that the basics of the diagrams are quite simple to understand, even for people without a technical background. Yet, it has a very well developed formal methodology (CSDP <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-role_modeling>); and it maps easily to first-order <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-order_logic> and description logics <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Description_logic>, which is great for people on the theory and implementation side. § 3. How § PLANLOFT Schema runs entirely in the modern web browser (just Chrome 39+ right now, but others soon) — there are no applications to install, and there is no security to worry about for casual use. The cloud infrastructure saves changes automatically and you can easily copy and share schemas. § For the technically inclined, PLANLOFT Schema runs in a combination of HTML5 (as XHTML) with inline SVG and heavy use of CSS3 and Javascript. The service architecture is optimized for heterogeneous cloud deployment, with distributed storage. XML, DOM, XSL, RDF and OWL are heavily used on the server side. § 4. Where § The schema application launches from planloft.net/schema/ <http://www.planloft.net/schema/>. There is context sensitive help <http://www.planloft.net/schema/help.xhtml>, a page for release notes <http://www.planloft.net/releases/schema-alpha.xhtml> and a support <http://www.planloft.com/news/mailto:support@planloft.net> email address. § This is an alpha release, so there are a lot of features missing that we would like to develop, especially an ORM2 style <http://www.planloft.net/issues/issue-618.xhtml> option; exclusion, union and ring constraints <http://www.planloft.net/issues/issue-591.xhtml>; and some alternative OWL exports <http://www.planloft.net/issues/issue-718.xhtml>. Other browsers are also high on the list. § 5. Use § While you are free to use PLANLOFT Schema <http://www.planloft.net/schema/> under the public terms <http://www.planloft.net/legals/terms-conditions-policies.xhtml>, it only comes with a warranty if you have a service contract with us. Only very limited support interaction can be provided outside of a contract, but nevertheless, you are welcome to ask us questions or make suggestions through the support <http://www.planloft.com/news/mailto:support@planloft.net> email. § ©2015 PLANLOFT registerPopups(new Array(), document.documentElement, "span", "explanation");