<div>I think it's an interesting problem to solve (Sharing gis models/processes), but...</div>
<div> </div>
<div>* Way too heavyweight for us, I don't have time/interest to build & maintain sheets of DXFs manually</div>
<div>* Of little practical use for us since our processes typically grow pretty organically with small meetings and whiteboards/stickies, eventually we are going to stop maintaining these 'heavy' model diagrams.</div>
<div>* Probably more useful for very large teams defining massive workflows with well-defined requirements/outputs, but I don't really work on those types of problems often (nor personally know many that really do anymore - and they'd probably already have some dialect of UML or ERM)</div>
<div>* Can't easily convert those DXFs into GDB/DB schemas or into the processes themselves, etc, so hence little use at the tech level</div>
<div> </div>
<div>It might be more useful to define a simple standardized set of symbols that handles 80% of what we do, and then for more complex processes just lets you name it, treat them like blackboxes and just annotate them or something.</div>
<div>Personally I would just probably use simple data flow & entity-relationship diagrams. If there was a simple system that modelled common spatial analysis processes via symbols then I might be interested in that.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I'm skeptical on the real world utility of building/maintaining large sets of diagrams that A) Don't fit into the business process generation/capture processes and B) Don't easily convert into the actual code/schemas underlying.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Perhaps figure out what the problem you're really trying to solve is. I.e. What am I trying to achieve via sharing models?</div>
<div> </div>
<div>- bri<br><br></div>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 9:48 AM, Landon Blake <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:lblake@ksninc.com">lblake@ksninc.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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<p><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 10pt">I posted a few weeks back I posted about possible ways to document and share GIS data models. I decided to move forward with a graphical approach. </span></font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 10pt"> </span></font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 10pt">I started building diagrams to document my GIS data model for the Public Land Survey System in the United States. I am drawing these diagrams in a CAD program. When I get things ironed out I hope to release the following items to the GIS community:</span></font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 10pt"> </span></font></p>
<p style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in"><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 10pt"><span>-<font size="1" face="Times New Roman"><span style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> </span></font></span></span></font><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 10pt">My completed GIS data model in DXF format that can be used as an example or template for other models.</span></font></p>
<p style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in"><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 10pt"><span>-<font size="1" face="Times New Roman"><span style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> </span></font></span></span></font><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 10pt">A set of CAD “blocks” that can be used to build similar diagrams.</span></font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 10pt"> </span></font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 10pt">If I like how things come together with the diagrams, I might try converting the diagrams to SVG. The diagrams would be much prettier in SVG, but I am quicker with CAD than I am with Inkscape, and I want to get a prototype completed quickly.</span></font></p>
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<p><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 10pt">This will make a lot more sense when you get to see the example diagrams.</span></font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 10pt"> </span></font></p>
<p><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 10pt">I welcome any collaboration on this effort. If there is interest, I could move this discussion to the Standards mailing list. It would be great to get input from interested parties now, while the diagrams are still taking shape.</span></font></p>
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<p><font size="2" face="Arial"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Landon</span></font></p>
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