Conceptual Modelling software with bi-directional modelling between Object-Role Modeling (ORM), Entity Relationship Diagrams, Labelled Property Graphs, Use Case Diagrams and State Transition Diagrams.
Requires Mindfusion.eu FlowCharter.Net Professional Edition, 248f04/msi which may be available from Mindfusion (Digitally Signed: Wednesday, 24 October 2007 11:01:57 PM)
Supports Projects, Users, Groups, Functions, Roles, Permissions in a client-server configuration. May be virtualised with peer-2-peer model management between users. Contact www.factengine.ai for Boston Enterprise support with Boston Server managing peer-2-peer relationships.
Or run as stand-alone Windows application.
https://www.youtube.com/@factengine2481/videos
YouTube videos of Boston.
boston.db (SQLite) is in the \database directory
Set [FirstRun] setting to 'True' for distributable, which copies the Boston database to C:\Users<UserName>\AppData\Local\FactEngine\Boston\Database on first run of Boston.
Details of the Fact-Based Modelling metamodel used by Boston can be found at: https://github.com/FactEngineCommunity/Fact-Based-Modelling-MetaModel.
NB Models may be stored completely within the databased (slowest performance), or the database table, MetaModelModel, used to reference the Model persisted as XML within a .fbm file (fastest performance).
Boston uses a 4-Layer Architecture where the metamodel of various languages (ERDs, LPGs, STDs, UCDs) are stored within the metamodel of Object-Role Modeling using Sample Populations/Fact Tables as the data storage of the model elements of the metamodel, making the ORM metamodel as meta-metamodel for that purpose.
Pages/Views store the language of interpretation for each language (ORM, ERD, LPG, STD, UCD) and Boston interprets the ORM model for that Page/View as the respective language.
Effectively a stylised Ehrenfeucht-Fraisse Game is established where the Duplicator 'wins' by finding the required structure of a given language within the given ORM model within the ORM meta/metamodel. Flagging each Page/View with the language of interpretation acts as a signalling mechanism under the same game theoretic approach to model interpretation.
See the paper in the root directory: Applied Use Of Ehrenfeucht-FraisseGames In Conceptual Model Management And Model Transformation. AppliedUseOfEhrenfeuchtFraisseGamesInConceptualModelManagementAndModelTransformation.pdf
Bi-directinal modeling is managed via events within a MVC (Model View Controller) architecture with Property Graph Schema (Labelled Property Graphs) and Entity Relationship Diagrams sharing a common metamodel, differentiated at interpretation (View Projection) time.
The effect is that the user can model in their required language (ORM, ERD, LPG, etc) and the common metamodel (ultimately at the ORM meta/metamodel layer) updated by the software via the events of the MVC architecture.
\ClassesLANGUAGEORM: Stores the Object-Role Modeling (Fact-Based Modelling) meta/metamodel classes;
\ClassesLANGUAGEORM\ORMInstances: Stores the View classes of the MVC architecture, for ORM Diagrams, and as used within Pages/Views for other languages;
\ClassesLANGUAGERDS: Stores the 'Relational Data Structure', which is the common metamodel between Entity Relationship Diagrams and Labelled Property Graphs;
\ClassesLANGUAGEPGS: Stores Property Graph Schema (Labelled Property Graph) specific classes (used at the View level);
\ClassesLANGUAGEERD: Stores Entity Relationship Diagram specific classes (used at the View level);
\ClassesLANGUAGEUCD: Stores Use Case Diagram specific classes (used at the View level);
\ClassesLANGUAGESTD: Stores State Transition Diagram specific classes (used at the View level);
\Forms\Diagrams: Stores the forms for the various views (ORM, ERD, LPG, STD, UCD);
\ClassesLANGUAGEORM\ORMCMML: Stores the (partial) classes of the ORM metamodel with methods to manage view data (Sample Populations/Fact Tables) for languages other than ORM;
The Metamodel used by Boston is documented at: https://github.com/FactEngineCommunity/Fact-Based-Modelling-MetaModel with ORMModel and ORMDiagram rather than FBMModel and FBMDiagram (otherwise the same).
The .fbm (Fact-Based Modelling) file extension is used for persisting models as XML using the Fact-Based Modelling MetaModel.