Ability of a model to retranslate its formal elements into everyday terms, understandable to stakeholders
Introduction to the notion
Restitution is the ability of the model to retranslate its formal elements into everyday terms, understood by the stakeholders. The diagrams of the semantic model must be able to be reinterpreted in natural language, without resulting in contradictions or ambiguities. We must be able, from the model, to restitute the discourse on the field of study. To this end, it is necessary to increase the expressive power of the model and to keep the synonyms related to the modeling elements. The thesaurus ensures this second point. The modeler will use object diagrams or sequence diagrams to unfold the model and explain, using scenarios, the more subtle points.
Comment
We would love the modeling tools to be able to exploit the information they contain to automatically restitute a part of the model. For example, from a correctly documented association, it would be easy to recompose the sentence:
- Subject = name of the class linked to the association (assuming that we can indicate the direction it is read in);
- “as” + role name on the association;
- Verb = name of the association (conventionally written in the 3rd person in the present indicative; this is where we need the direction it is read in or, better still, the ability to give two names to the association which can be read in each of the directions);
- Article of the direct object, determined according to cardinalities;
- Direct object = name of the other class.
This is only an example. The restituted text will enable a better validation of the model by domain experts.
