Introduction

oomodels.org is an open library of object oriented modelling artefacts from the business and technical domain, offering open operational business knowledge.

The artefacts stored in oomodels are


 * open - see Philosophy
 * operational - provided in several formats ready for use in your model aware enterprise
 * object oriented - basically that means: state of the art
 * quality assured - see Quality
 * from the business domain - get your industry specific models from here
 * from the technical domain - get all that necessary infratructure stuff from here, too
 * human readable - i.e. at least xml, ideally well documented
 * human editable - easily editable with mediawikis editing capabilities
 * machine readable - readable by software due to structural and content constraints

You can download, contribute, discuss and develop modelling artefacts, meet architects and software providers, convert formats, get started with your software solution, find software to operate your model, integrate with eclipse and learn about formats, concepts and technologies.

Philosophy
oomodels.org is open. That means, everyone can participate, contribute and benefit in the same manner.

Exceptions from the rule: we might eventually need protection against vandalism, and we might need moderation to keep the spirit and functioning of oomodels.org, e.g. correct annotations and alike.

oomodels.org is not anti-commercial or alike: every company and person is invited to present herself in the same and fair manner (i.e., same amount of information, alphabetical ordering and alike). We do not share any ideological opinions.

The artefacts (i.e. models, classes, templates etc.) in oomodels shall be open/free in the sense that some GPL-, CreativeCommons- or-a-like-license applies. If not stated otherwise, the creative commons license given on the bottom left of the page applies.

Software for processing these models need not be free or open. There is no restriction on this, except the fair presentation.

oomodels.org was initiated and is currently mainly driven by Andreas Leue. I am open to put this effort in the hands of some possibly better suited foundation. If anyone is willing to help me with his experience in doing so, you are very welcome to contact me.

Quality
The combination of the wiki nature and the machine readbility influence the quality of artefacts within oomodels.org.

First, the wiki nature enables collaboration, discussion and feedback related to artefacts. We can establish architect groups on oomodels.org who can officially approve certain artefacts and provide signed seals of approval.

Second, artefacts are machine readable. Use of the artefacts and conversion/download software will as a side effect increase their quality. As a coarse check, a robot might download and convert the artefacts routinely.

Download
Each artefact in oomodels.org provides a link to the DownloadManager. There, you can get the code, which is automatically extracted from the wiki page and optionally converted into other formats.

The download manager relies on correct annotations of the artefacts. Specifically, the type and encoding of artefacts are crucial. For an example, see Artefact:Model/org/oomodels/tests/models/basic/SimpleClass.

Then, in the download manager, you may choose from a variety of target formats you might wish the artefact to be converted to before downloading.

I.e., this works if someone has contributed a respective converter. See Contribute for details. Or read the next section (hint, hint, hint ;-) ).

Contribute
Be part of the creation of this powerful and valuable artefact resource!

Remember: the site is a wiki. Everyone can contribute to this resource.

If you're unsure how to edit in general, you may want to try the sandbox.

If you're unsure how to edit, annotate and organise your artefacts within oomodels.org,


 * be sure to read the short introduction
 * get an idea of using namespaces in the wiki
 * find a suitable namespace you're in control of (e.g. com/example)
 * and try experimenting within your own sandbox (e.g. com/example/sandbox)

E.g., your first model might be on the page Artefact:Model/com/example/sandbox/MyFirstModel.

Discuss
Each page in oomodels -- as is the case with any mediawiki -- provides a discussion/talk page. There you can leave comments, make suggestions, exchange opinions with others without influencing the corresponding main page.

Just click on the dicsussion tab on the top of the page.

Develop
The organisation of artefacts within well defined, globally unique namespaces, while at the same time within one easily accessible wiki with it's interlinking and discussion capabilities provides a nice framework to collaboratively develop models.

You may want to use this to mature your own framework within your namespace, or you might want to participate to develop a common modelling groundwork as we intend to do within the org/oomodels namespace.

Meet
Artefacts and formats might be linked with people or companies who have created them or who provide software to process them. There is a list of persons and companies who work with, work for or just use oomodels.org and it's content.

You might want to get in touch with them - here's the opportunity.

Convert
Since there is no world-wide-agreed-upon modelling standard avaible yet, and by far no such standard which allows modelling of complete, fully functional and production quality applications, we cannot enforce such a standard.

Therefore, we provide a conversion mechanism. It allows downloading of artefacts in several target formats, as is appropriate for your needs.

Simply click the download manager on each artefact page and select from the options.

To learn more about how the conversion mechanism works and how you can contribute your own converter, please refer to the ArtefactConversion page.

Get Started
Up to now, building a real, individual enterprise solution offered you two alternatives:


 * highest flexibility, no domain knowledge: building a new solution from scratch, using some framework, tool or whatsoever
 * few flexibility, lots of domain knowledge: starting with an existing solution, and adopting it to your needs

Both alternatives hurt. With oomodels.org, there is a third:


 * highest flexibility, lots of domain knowledge: get your selection of models from oomodels.org directly into your workspace, and choose a framework you like to build the application with

For eclipse, such a download-into-workspace-plugin is under development (Eclipse Update Site). For other IDE's, feel free to contribute a respective extension.

Find
Associated with artefacts and formats, you may find people or companies offering services or solutions related to these artefacts. This may range from simple consultancy services up to a click-and-download-complete-solution feature.

Integrate
An eclipse-plugin to download oomodels.org-artefacts directly into your workspace is under development: Eclipse Update Site.

Learn
Since it's a wiki, there is much space for general information and accompanying articles related to the artefacts or simply related to oo modelling in general.

In the Artefact:Document namespace is a place for storing general information.