Some of the readers of this blog are interested in modelling, and then mainly conceptual data models or ontologies. There are more types of models and modelling languages as well, such as mind maps, biological models, domain-specific languages, and so on. Can you confidently say—and justify!—which one is the best? Would such an answer be so elaborate so as to lean towards the idea of, and support existing calls for, modelling as a specialisation in an IT or computing degree programme, if not deserving to be a separate discipline outright? If so: why? What sets it apart and what are recurring themes across the various types of models and ways of modelling, and their differences? These questions are easy to ask, but far from trivial to answer. I tried anyway, to some extent at least. The latest attempt written in an accessible way—i.e., more like popular science than textbook-like—can be found in Chapter 7 of my recently published book entitled “The what and how of modelling information and knowledge: from mind maps to ontologies”, which was published by Springer (also available through Springer professional, online retailers such as Amazon, and university libraries). Instead of summarising that in this post, I did so in a guest post of Jordi Cabot’s blog, which can be read here: https://modeling-languages.com/on-comparing-modelling-languages/.
Keet blog 