Information model

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An information model is, within the field of data modeling, an abstract but formal representation of entities including their properties, relationships and the operations that can be performed on them.

The entities being modeled may be real-world, such as devices on a network, or they may themselves be abstract, such as the entities used in a billing system. Typically, though, they are used to model a constrained domain that can be completely described by a closed set of entities, properties, relationships and operations.

The main driving force behind the definition of an information model is to provide formalism to the description of a problem domain without constraining how that description is mapped to an actual implementation in software. There may be many mappings of the information model. Such mappings are called Data Models irrespective of whether they are Object Models (e.g. using UML), Entity Relationship Models or XML schemas.

The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) provides a standard set of information models for various enterprise domains under the general title of the Common Information Model (CIM). Specific information models are derived from CIM for particular management domains. The TeleManagement Forum (TMF) has defined an advanced model for the Telecommunication domain (the Shared Information/Data model, or SID) as another. This includes views from the business, service and resource domains within the Telecommunication industry. The TMF has established a set of principles that a OSS integration should adopt, along with a set of models that provide standardized approaches. The models interact with the information model (the Shared Information/Data model, or SID), via a process model (the enhanced Telecom Operation Map, or eTOM) and a life cycle model.

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