Does it exist? It is what i do, but I have never yet in my career of over 25 years found an employer, co-worker, or prospective employer interested in it, or at least interested enough to take action. A possible explanation is that even though I have been doing this for 25 years, my research has finally gotten to the point where I can start explaining it.
Information modeling is a technological and design artifact constructed using an Information Analysis of the information that the customer really needs. Customers don't generally really need data, they need Real Information. Information modeling stores the information that the customers need in Information Data Structures. Information modeling constructs these information data structures and fills them with data using Information Analysis by hand or in some automated fashion.
Please provide an example.
Data bases store data. data is things like names, numbers, dates etc. objects generally store data, generally in fields or properties. A large hierarchy of objects or an xml consists of lots of pieces of data put into their respective places. Data tends to be precise, and to be placed in a hard coded context (columns, object, xml tags).
Information on the other hand, is imprecise. It takes the hard coded structure of an xml or an object hierarchy or a database table/column/relationship structure and converts this context information into something that can be stored in a variable.
When you are doing Information Modeling you build an Information Model which is a technological and design artifact that can be used at various layers in an application. Or you can build a separate Information Layer with it. Information modeling is the first step our civilization will need to take in going from conventional programming to common Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence is built on information. The Information Model is not Artificial Intelligence, but it is something that Artificial Intelligence will be built upon. It is the foundation.
-- Jon Grover
See original on c2.com 