Code for the Kingdom - London Project:
“Where’s the Meaning?”
Kingdom Purpose of this Project
To increasingly free people to use the gifts God has given them in the workplace by
maximizing how well data-based computer software:
 speaks the language they use in their normal business communication, and
 implements, and keeps current with, the business policies they choose by which to
operate the organization
so that they are decreasingly frustrated and constrained in the free use of their gifts by
the way the computer software currently works.
The cornerstone on which this possibility can be realized turns out to be the meaning of the
words and phrases people use to communicate with their colleagues in the organization and
with the organization’s customers, suppliers, etc.
The Word that expresses Meaning
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John
1:1)
“No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made
him known.” (John 1 :18)
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.” (Colossians 1:15)
The power of the Word that is full of Meaning
“He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being, and he sustains
all things by his powerful word.” (Hebrews 1:3)
The Spirit interprets the Meaning of the Word
“All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is
mine and make it known to you.” (John 16:15)
Dorothy L Sayers develops this theme in her book, “Mind of the Maker” (978-0826476784)
Audience and Need
As someone who works for an organization of some significant size,
I need to:
 know the precise business meanings, as shared among all my colleagues by
definitions, that they intend for the words and phrases they use when they
author business documents, especially policy and other governance
documents;
so that:
 I can collaborate and communicate most effectively with my
colleagues, and
 make intelligent decisions and take intelligent actions using those
documents and my gifts that:
o minimize risk to us and our organization, and
o maximize value to our organization and its customers; and
 my colleagues who are responsible for sourcing the software I use
have the yardstick of unambiguous business policies and
behavioural rules by which to measure the acceptability of that
software, based on how well it currently implements these polices
and rules, so that I am free to use my judgment and other God-given
gifts and never have to say “the computer won’t let us to do that”
again.

have available a business dictionary, rich with meaning, showing
interrelationships among the meanings and the things in the organization
that are referred to when using words and phrases;
so that:
 I can find all the terms and meanings that I share with my colleagues
as used in business communication, and understand them in the
context of how everything the organization deals with fits together
in right relationship, and
 my colleagues who are responsible for the software I use have the
yardstick of shared, agreed business meanings and their business
terms by which to measure the acceptability of that software, based
on how well its screens and reports use the shared business terms
with their single agreed meaning in the given usage context.
What this Project Plans to Build
To realize this vision, a foundation has now been laid in an international standard,
“Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR)”
(http://www.omg.org/spec/SBVR/1.3/PDF), whose development was led by Donald Chapin.
SBVR is built on top of the International Standards Organization (ISO)’s terminology science
standards of ISO Technical Committee 37 “Terminology and other language and content
resources” (www.iso.org/iso/iso_technical_committee.html%3Fcommid%3D48104).
This Kingdom Code open source project is to build some key standards-related function that
can be freely used by anyone. The tactical purpose of this project is to “prime the pump” by
providing enough of an “ecosystem” around the SBVR standard and natural language
grammar structure standards (de-facto and formal) to encourage others to provide
additional functions that make this vision real in organizations around the world.
Strangely, but in a very real way known from long experience, the IT community does not
have the eyes to see or value this vision. That is why priming the pump with this ecosystem
of function to demonstrate the possibilities, and enable the benefits to begin to be
experienced is critical to the realization of this vision.
The scope and benefit of this “ecosystem” is described in a paper “Using Natural Language
and SBVR to Author Unambiguous Business Governance Documents” presented in June 2015
at the ISO TC 37 Plenary Meeting Workshop in Japan
(http://www.businesssemantics.com/UsingNaturalLanguageAndSBVRToAuthorUnambiguou
sBusinessGovernanceDocuments(DonaldChapinAndJohn%20Hall).pdf).
The following components are planned for this SBVR standard “ecosystem”:
1. A Microsoft Office 365 Word Add-in (for maximum initial coverage) that accesses a
specified online SBVR Terminological Dictionary and pastes the meaning the author
intended behind his/her words and phrases in the document text using HTML
<span>…</span> SBVR-based mark-up.
Since the pasted meanings appear as mouse-over tool tips, this component will
enable business document authors to produce document content where there will
be no question in the minds of the readers about the document’s intended meaning.
2. A simple website interface to some of the REST API function to enable
terminologists, business meaning ontologists and other people who create business
glossary and SBVR Terminological Dictionary content to determine what entries are
needed and gain a head start of the contents of those entries.
3. A simple website interface to some of the REST API function to enable governance
document authors to submit natural language business policy and behavioural rule
sentences, have help in clarifying them, and receive back an outline of the formal
meaning structure of the sentence and file containing the SBVR Semantic
Formulation for the sentence.
These SBVR Semantics Formulations are interpretable in formal logic and serve as
the basis for a partially automated transformation of the meaning of natural
language sentence into an executable rule in some IT rule language without loosing
the original business meaning of the rule.
4. Most of the function envisioned for this SBVR standard “ecosystem” will be:
 linguistic analysis-based software using existing linguistic analysis open
source capability.
 designed as REST APIs capable of being run in the cloud.
Some possible API functions for this ecosystem are:



Extraction of noun phrases that are subjects of verbs and objects of verbs or
prepositions, as well as verb phrases, in the context of their sentence
clauses as input to creating SBVR Terminological Dictionary content.
Transformation to/from JSON canonical equivalent of the SBVR standard
interchange file (XML) for use with the REST APIs.
APIs that implement the vision of the “Using Natural Language and SBVR to
Author Unambiguous Business Governance Documents” paper mentioned
above.
The primary operational platform of design is Microsoft Azure using the .Net Web API
capability with the APIs exposed using Azure App Service API Apps
(https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/services/app-service/api/).
The planned development platform is the new Microsoft .Net 6 MVC 5 that is crossplatform. The planned development tools are free .Net tools like Microsoft Visual Studio
Community 2015 and Visual Studio Code. The coding language(s) will be those supported by
Azure running under .NET with the nature of the function to be coded determining the
choice among alternatives. GitHub will be the code and documentation repository and
continuous deployment to Azure environment. The project management tool is still be
decided.