Using SBVR and AIXM UML as vocabulary

The Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Rules (SBVR)  standard is used for the writing of the AIXM business rules in relation with the AIXM UML logical data model. This means that the AIXM classes and their properties (attributes and associations), together with their definitions and data types, provide the the "business vocabulary" that is used as the basis for the definition of the AIXM business rules.

Note concerning the previous versions and the use of Schematron

Previous versions of the AIXM Business Rules (up to and including version 0.7.2) used to include Schematron code for a part of the rules. This was done for two reasons:

• in order to verify that the SBVR description of the rule is sufficiently clear and unambiguous in order permit its actual implementation as software code;
• as proof of concept, to show how an AIXM data set could be verified against the business rules using software readily-available.

However, the Schematron code was missing for many rules and even where it existed it was no always maintained when the rules were modified. The code was also not optimised for large AIXM data sets, which could result in performance issues. Therefore, starting with version 0.8 there is no Schematron code included with the AIXM Business Rules set. It might come back in a future release if there is a real need to that and if possible to find resources for properly maintaining it.