Beginning this June, version 1.3 of the Object Management Group's "Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules" (SBVR) specification will be publicly available at http://www.omg.org/spec/SBVR/1.3/.

The primary improvement in SBVR v1.3 was to present the normative contents of the SBVR specification in a much more cohesive and easily understandable sequence.  This significant improvement was achieved by:

• Regrouping terminological entries in the old Clauses 8, 11, and 12 so that:


• all concepts on the same topic at a given level of detail are grouped together, and
• the definitions of each concept almost entirely use terms already defined earlier in the document.


• Presenting concept diagrams with the same content as in old Clauses 8, 11, and 12 but based on the new groupings of the terminological entries.


• Merging three sets of duplicated terminological entries discovered in the regrouping process, each into a single terminological entry, without changing their meanings.


• Making the clearly-implied meaning of the term 'element', which is used formally (styled) in other definitions, explicit by added a terminological entry for 'element'.


• Revising the SBVR Table of Contents to reflect the new groupings and sequence of the terminological entries.

This re-sequencing of the SBVR Table of Contents made no changes to the substance of the SBVR specification or its XMI and XSD files except as follows:

• Removed the four sub-vocabularies of the SBVR Vocabulary that were dependent on the old sequence of terminological entries and the old SBVR Table of Contents.  As per the transform rules from the SBVR Vocabulary terminological entries to the SBVR XMI Metamodel found in old SBVR Clause 13 (now Clause 23), the four corresponding generated SBVR v1.2 XMI packages were not generated into the SBVR v1.3 XMI Metamodel.


• The three sets of duplicate entries that were merged were generated with only one entry in the SBVR XMI file for each set.


• The terminological entry making 'element' explicit was generated in the SBVR XMI Metamodel.


• Aligned SBVR Clause 2 "Conformance" with the Simplified UML Conformance as appropriate to SBVR and to the re-sequenced SBVR Table of Contents:


• Added Abstract Syntax and SBVR Semantics types of conformance based on Simplified UML conformance.
• Provided a standard way for vendors to document such conformance (since SBVR has always supported conformance at the individual terminological entry and corresponding SBVR XSD element level).
• Removed four conformance points in SBVR v1.2 that were based on the four sub-vocabularies of the SBVR Vocabulary removed in SBVR v1.3 (see above).

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