The fundamental concepts of SBVR

• “bodies of shared meaning” and vocabularies: agreement of a community on a set of concepts and terms that designate them
• consistent usage of the terms with a (semi-)formalized natural language grammar to express definitions, static/’definitional’ rules, and behavioral/’operational’ rules: obligations, permissions, prohibitions

The basis for the first bullet is the concept system in the ISO 1087-1 standard for concepts in writing dictionaries and local vocabularies in ISO standards. The basis for the second is unidentified.

Regrettably, SBVR is formulated using a mix of linguistic, semantic, pragmatic, and formal logic concepts without tying up the resulting near misses and loose ends. Further, it is itself written in a semi-formalized English (SBVR Structured English) grammar, which is not normatively or clearly specified. (It is a camel constructed by a committee with diverse expertise, but largely common goals.) Still, the principal concepts in the specification are valid and the approach is correct.

Edward Barkmeyer