The History
Starting in the early 1990s the FCO-IM method and theory steadily emerged out of the method NIAM. Many articles, books, tools and research material have been made public during that time.
The Principles
The FCO-IM method contains the following set of structural principles which are additional to the basic principles of NIAM, such as natural language, concrete examples, user interviews and prescription based information modelling.
Advantages of Fact Based Modeling
In the realm of data modeling, the FCO-IM (Fully Communication Oriented Information Modeling) method has emerged as a powerful successor to the well-established NIAM (Natural Information Analysis Method). Both approaches rely on the use of natural language to construct data models. FCO-IM, however, takes this methodology a step further, offering numerous advantages that make it an ideal choice for creating elegant and highly adaptable models, all the while ensuring ease of validation by both business experts and users.
Why Communication Matters
Fully Communication Oriented Information Modeling (FCO-IM) emphasizes modeling the communication aspect of data. Employees constantly exchange facts through communication, such as "Invoice 1238 has an invoice date 1-1-1999". FCO-IM models such communication and facts in natural language. This article highlights the importance of communication in developing a fact-based data model.
Unification of Concepts, Less is More
A unification of concepts was presented at the "Trends in informationmodeling" seminar by Harm van der Lek. It illustrates the elegancy of the method FCO-IM by indicating a reduction of elements used in various data modeling methods.
Reality, Regulation and Communication
These days, what IT represents is commonly misunderstood. However, it used to be very clear: “It is the field of expertise to provide a form of automated communication between people.” Previously, it was all about automating manual administrative labor. Over time, systems were included in that communication. Business experts were trained to perform the programming of computers. Knowledge in and outside systems was still very integrated.
