Object Management Group Terms and Acronyms

This glossary collects most of the terms and acronyms that you'll encounter at OMG meetings, and in OMG documents. Each definition is only as authoritative as its cited source; this document itself is not an official reference. Technical terms are defined in our official specifications, and procedural terms are defined in our Policies and Procedures document. If our explanation here goes beyond what appears in these documents, it is our attempt to clarify and not to impose our interpretation on a topic. References are collected at the end of this document. 

Terms in italics, and virtually all acronyms, have their own entry in the list. You may have to convert an italicized term to singular form to find it - for example, proxies is represented by the entry Proxy. 

[ATC] Air Traffic Control Specification

[BCQ] OMG Board of Directors Business Committee Questionnaire

[CCM] CORBA Core Components Specification 

[CORBA] Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA/IIOP)

[CSIV2] [CORBA] Chapter 26

[CWM] Common Warehouse Metamodel Specification

[DAIS] Data Acquisition from Industrial Systems

[EDOC] UML Profile for EDOC Specification

[EJB] “Enterprise JavaBeans™”

[FORMS] “ISO PAS Compatible Submission Template”

[GE] Gene Expression

[GLS] General Ledger Specification

[Guide] The OMG Hitchhiker's Guide

[IDL] ISO/IEC 14750 also see [CORBA] Chapter 3.

[IDLC++] IDL to C++ Language Mapping

[MDAa] OMG Architecture Board, "Model Driven Architecture - A Technical Perspective”

[MDAb] “Developing in OMG's Model Driven Architecture (MDA)”

[MDAc] “MDA Guide”

[MDAd] “MDA "The Architecture of Choice for a Changing World™"”

[MOF] Meta Object Facility Specification

[MQS] “MQSeries Primer”

[NS] Naming Service

[OMA] “Object Management Architecture™”

[OTS] Transaction Service

[P&P] Policies and Procedures of the OMG Technical Process

[PIDS] Personal Identification Service

[RAD] Resource Access Decision Facility

[RFC2119] IETF Best Practices: Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels

[RM-ODP] ISO/IEC 10746

[SEC] CORBA Security Service

[TOS] Trading Object Service

[UML] Unified Modeling Language Specification

[UMLC] UML Profile for CORBA

[XMI] XML Metadata Interchange Specification

[XML/Value] XML Value Type Specification

B.2 General Glossary

Architecture Board (AB) - The OMG plenary that is responsible for ensuring the technical merit and MDA-compliance of RFPs and their submissions.

Board of Directors (BoD) - The OMG body that is responsible for adopting technology.

Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) - An OMG distributed computing platform specification that is independent of implementation languages.

Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM) - An OMG specification for data repository integration.

CORBA Component Model (CCM) - An OMG specification for an implementation language independent distributed component model.

Interface Definition Language (IDL) - An OMG and ISO standard language for specifying interfaces and associated data structures.

Letter of Intent (LOI) - A letter submitted to the OMG BoD’s Business Committee signed by an officer of an organization signifying its intent to respond to the RFP and confirming the organization’s willingness to comply with OMG’s terms and conditions, and commercial availability requirements.

Mapping - Specification of a mechanism for transforming the elements of a model conforming to a particular metamodel into elements of another model that conforms to another (possibly the same) metamodel.

Metadata - Data that represents models. For example, a UML model; a CORBA object model expressed in IDL; and a relational database schema expressed using CWM.

Metamodel - A model of models.

Meta Object Facility (MOF) - An OMG standard, closely related to UML, that enables metadata management and language definition.

Model - A formal specification of the function, structure and/or behavior of an application or system.

Model Driven Architecture (MDA) - An approach to IT system specification that separates the specification of functionality from the specification of the implementation of that functionality on a specific technology platform.

Normative – Provisions that one must conform to in order to claim compliance with the standard. (as opposed to non-normative or informative which is explanatory material that is included in order to assist in understanding the standard and does not contain any provisions that must be conformed to in order to claim compliance).

Normative Reference – References that contain provisions that one must conform to in order to claim compliance with the standard that contains said normative reference.

Platform - A set of subsystems/technologies that provide a coherent set of functionality through interfaces and specified usage patterns that any subsystem that depends on the platform can use without concern for the details of how the functionality provided by the platform is implemented.

Platform Independent Model (PIM) - A model of a subsystem that contains no information specific to the platform, or the technology that is used to realize it.

Platform Specific Model (PSM) - A model of a subsystem that includes information about the specific technology that is used in the realization of it on a specific platform, and hence possibly contains elements that are specific to the platform.

Request for Information (RFI) - A general request to industry, academia, and any other interested parties to submit information about a particular technology area to one of the OMG's Technology Committee subgroups.

Request for Proposal (RFP) - A document requesting OMG members to submit proposals to the OMG's Technology Committee. Such proposals must be received by a certain deadline and are evaluated by the issuing task force.

Task Force (TF) - The OMG Technology Committee subgroup responsible for issuing a RFP and evaluating submission(s).

Technology Committee (TC) - The body responsible for recommending technologies for adoption to the BoD. There are two TCs in OMG – Platform TC (PTC), that focuses on IT and modeling infrastructure related standards; and Domain TC (DTC), that focus on domain specific standards.

Unified Modeling Language (UML) - An OMG standard language for specifying the structure and behavior of systems. The standard defines an abstract syntax and a graphical concrete syntax.

UML Profile - A standardized set of extensions and constraints that tailors UML to particular use.

XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) - An OMG standard that facilitates interchange of models via XML documents.

< Note to RFP Editors: Append additional appendices if needed here and update the list and brief description of appendices in Chapter 1. >

Last updated on 05/21/2012