Datum is singular. Data is plural. So we ought to talk about these data and many data and fewer data, right? It sounds all wrong to me. Data is like sand, water or furniture: a " mass noun ". I am very happy saying this data, much data and less data....

Cameron has been blogging about new features in our product.. In a recent post he used the term Explicit Design. I've been reflecting on this, and I like it. In software development we really do need to capture design data that is not just the code, but...

Keith Short has been blogging about Oslo and the DSL Toolkit and Oslo's use of model-driven terminology. There's been a fair amount of speculation about how all these things fit together, so it is good now PDC is over to be able to clarify the relationships...

Stuart has blogged about the new features expected in DSL Tools in VS 2010. There's plenty new there: DSL libraries, DSL extensibility, read-only models, forms-based UI, ModelBus, precompiled templates, movable labels, sticky tools, copy/paste and more...

So what really is the difference between syntax and semantics in UML? Firstly there is the notation, or concrete syntax. This defines what shapes are allowed on the diagrams: rectangles, ovals, lines, arrows, solid, dashed, compartments, annotations...