Modeler: Tutorial/Classification and Qualification

This lesson is mainly concerned with the classification and qualification of fact expressions. It will also cover two important windows from CaseTalk: The Project Manager and the IG Viewer. Finally it treats several ways to look at your information grammar which is developing during the classification and qualifcation of the fact expressions.

Creating a project

Start CaseTalk

This window contains three buttons providing you quickly create, open or reopen CaseTalk projects.

Click New Project

If the Welcome Screen does not appear select New Project from the File menu.

Enter the project information as shown below and click Ok

If you do not have this directory you may select and/or create it by clicking the small folder button within the Directory edit box.

The following windows will appear:

The first window, the Project Manager, is divided into two sections: on the left side the files related to the project will be displayed in an hierarchical tree; on the right side the properties of the selected file will be displayed.

The second window (also divided into two sections) is the IG Viewer and is titled . On the left side all names of the object types and fact types will be displayed. The fact (type) expressions related to the selected object type or fact type will be displayed on the right side. This window displays all model information in a browsable manner.

A third and last window is opened when starting a new project and that is the expression entry window. We will go into that in the next section.

The right sections of both the Project Manager and the IG Viewer can be hidden by clicking the symbol.

Press F3 to make the IG Viewer the top window.

Fact expression 1

1. Open the Repository menu and select New Expression (or press F6).

2. Enter the fact expression 'There is a student Peter Johnson'.

(Do not enter the ).

3. Type 'Student' in the object type / fact type field:

4. Click Qualify or press Enter.

By clicking Qualify you have assigned the fact expression 'There is a student Peter Johnson' to the fact type 'Student'. At the same time a diagram preview is drawn in the right panel. The further the qualification proceeds the more complete this diagram will become. It will give you visual feedback on what you're modeling. Escpecially handy when a modeling on top of parts already present in the Repository.

5. Select the expression part 'Peter' using the mouse or keyboard.

Note: If you have made an error, you can press the Undo button to undo the last action.

6. Type 'first name' in the object type / fact type field.

7. Click Qualify.

This assigns the expression part 'Peter' to the object type 'first name'.

8. Select the expression part 'Johnson'. Type 'lastname' as the object type / fact type name and click Qualify.

9. Click Ready to confirm you have classified and qualified all variable expression parts in 'There is a student '.

10. Click Ready to confirm you do not want to classify any variable expression part in 'Peter'.

As a result of this action 'first name' will become a label type.

11. Click Ready, then click Ok.

By clicking Ok you confirmed the classification and qualification of the fact type expression. The object types / fact types: 'Student', 'first name' and 'lastname' will be displayed in the IG Viewer.

12. Click on 'Student' in the IG Viewer:

The new fact type expression will be displayed in the top right section of the IG Viewer. Currently the bottom right panel contains the same information as the left panel. This is temporarily since, it contains related information. You may navigate the model later on, by double cliking related items in the bottom right panel

Fact expression 2

Step 1

1. Open the Repository menu and select New Expression.

2. Enter the fact expression 'Student Peter Johnson lives in New York'.

3. Type 'City Of Residence' in the object type / fact type field, then click Qualify.

4. Select the expression part 'Student Peter Johnson' and qualify this part as 'Student':

5. Select the expression part 'New York' and qualify this part as 'City', then click Ready.

The expression part 'Student Peter Johnson' will now be activated.

6. Select the expression part 'Peter' and qualify this part as 'first name'.

You can search in the object type / fact type field by entering the first letters of the name you are looking for and pressing the arrow down key several times.

7. Select the expression part 'Johnson' and qualify this part as 'lastname'.

8. Click Ready.

Note: The expression part 'New York' is activated instead of the expression part 'Peter'. The casetool knows that both 'first name' and 'lastname' are label types (therefore cannot contain any roles).

9. Select the complete expression part 'New York' and qualify this part as 'city name', then click Ready twice.

You should now have the following diagram displayed in the window:

10. Click Ok.

You have now confirmed the classification and qualification of the fact type expression. Again the IG Viewer is updated to display the new object types / fact types. Note: The fact type () 'Student' is changed into a nominalized fact type ().

Examining regenerated fact (type) expressions

Step 2

1. Click on 'City Of Residence' in the IG Viewer.

The fact type expression: ' lives in ' will be shown in the right section of the IG Viewer. The expression codes of the object type expressions which should be substituted are displayed behind the object type / fact type name betweeen the <>. In the top of the IG Viewer you will find three tabs:

Currently the OTL tab is selected. (OTL = 'object type level'). On the object type level object type expressions are not substituted into the shown fact type expressions.

2. Activate the LTL tab. (LTL = 'label type level').

On the label type level object type expressies are substituted in the show fact type expressions. As a result the fact type expression changes into: 'Student lives in '.

3. Activate the LL tab. (LL = 'label level').

On the label level both object type expressions and labels are substituted. As a result the fact type expression now changes into the fact expression: 'Student Peter Johnson lives in New York'. The box below contains a summary of the three substitution levels:

OTL: lives in

LTL: Student lives in

LL: Student Peter Johnson lives in New York

4. Select the fact type 'Student'.

All items related to Student are shown in the bottom right panel. You can now double click these items to navigate the repository.

Looking at the IG: Fact type documentation

Step 2

1. Open the View menu and select OTFT Documentation (F8).

The OTFT Documentation window will now appear. In the window the fact type documentation for the selected fact type (in the IG Viewer) will be displayed.

2. Keep the OTFT Documentation window open and select another object type or fact type from the IG Viewer.

Note: The contents of the OTFT Documentation window is automatically updated. You may even select multiple items in the Repository. This will create multiple tabs in the documentation window.

To print the fact type documentation select Print or Print All from the popup-menu of the fact type documentation. You can also press Ctrl+C to copy this image to the clipboard for processing in other applications.

3. Close the OTFT Documentation window.

Saving a Project

1.Select the Save All button to save the project and all related files.

2.Save the information grammar as 'lesson.ig'.

Looking at the IG: The information grammar diagram

Step 2

1. Open the File menu and select New, Diagram.

The appearing window is the Diagram Designer and is titled . Note: The file has been added to the Project Manager. Diagrams are saved seperately from information grammars.

2. Select the fact type 'Student' from the IG Viewer and drag it to the Diagram Designer window.

3. Drag 'City Of Residence' and 'City' from the IG Viewer to the diagram:

During the classification and qualification of fact expression CaseTalk automatically assigns role numbers to the variable expression parts. As a result the role numbers in your diagram may differ from the role numbers in other documents containing the Apprenticeship example.

4. Complete the diagram by placing 'first name', 'lastname' and 'city name'.

You may do this by either dragging more information into the diagram or use the context menu. For using the context menu, please select 'Add Related' and navigate from there.

Looking at the IG: The repository

Step 3

1. Open the View menu and select Query Repository (or press Ctrl+Q):

In the Query Repository you will find the names of all repository tables.

2. Click the OTFT table:

A Table Viewer window appears, containing the object type / fact type table. The structure of the Repository will not be explained in this lessons. Note: you're able to query the repository using SQL.

3. Close the window.

Fact expression 3

Step 3

1. Classify and qualify the fact expression 'Apprenticeship S101 is available' as shown below. The fact expression belongs to the fact type 'Apprenticeship', this name is shown in the upper right corner of the window: