SBVR12 — Scope of an SBVR Body of Shared Concepts

SBVR is intended for development of semantic models of businesses (and enterprises run on similar lines, such as public sector bodies and not-for-profit organizations). Its scope says “This specification defines the vocabulary and rules for documenting the semantics of business vocabularies, business facts, and business rules”.
A lot of SBVR RTF email and teleconference discussion seems to be taken up with examples that are at best tenuously related to business, and often not at all related to business. There is, of course, no reason that people should not use SBVR as SVR – Semantics of Vocabulary and Rules – for any universe of discourse, whether business-related or not. But it is important to keep focus on what SBVR is intended for.
Dependencies with other Issue Resolutions:
None
Discussion:
There are two aspects of keeping SBVR’s focus on business:
1. The context of an SBVR model of a business – a body of shared concepts, represented as one or more terminological dictionaries and rulebooks – is the actual world in which the business operates.
2. The content of an SBVR model of a business is the meanings of the definitions of relevant things, relationships and guidance in the business.
The universe of discourse is the part of the business selected by the business owners to be within scope. For example, in EU-Rent (as used in the SBVR specification) it is car rentals as opposed to finance, car purchasing and sales, premises management, HR, etc.
This issue is about a matter of SBVR practice and can be addressed with notes (or perhaps in more general editorial).
Resolution:
Add notes under the entry for ‘body of shared meanings’:
• To describe the universe of discourse modeled by the body of shared meanings
• To emphasize that the body of shared meanings comprises only meanings

Revised Text:
In 11.1.1.2, under the entry for body of shared meanings, add the following notes:
Note: When modelling a business (such as EU-Rent), the universe of discourse is bounded by what the business owners decide is in scope. That would be the actual world of some part of EU-Rent’s business (e.g. rentals, as opposed to, say, premises management, purchase/sales of cars, or HR) and some possible worlds that are reachable from the actual world. If the EU-Rent owners say that they are considering renting RVs or starting up in China, then possible worlds that include these kinds of business are in the universe of discourse.
If EU-Rent is not considering renting construction equipment or camping gear, then possible worlds that include these kinds of business are not in the universe of discourse – and neither are possible worlds that include impossibilities. Whether ‘Kinnell Construction rented backhoe 123 on 2012-08-28’ or ‘John rode into work on a unicorn’ correspond to states of affairs or not, are not relevant to EU-Rent. They are out of scope.
In-scope propositions may have to be constrained by necessities to ensure that they are not impossible. e.g. ‘Necessity: Each rental car is stored at at most one branch [at any given time].’
Note: A body of shared meanings contains meanings of:
• noun concepts that define kinds of thing in the universe of discourse
• verb concepts that define relationships between kinds of thing in the universe of discourse
• elements of guidance that constrain or govern the things and relationships defined by the concepts.
It does not contain ground facts or facts derived from ground facts (other than as illustrative examples), or things in the universe of discourse, or information system artifacts that model things in the universe of discourse – although it may provide vocabulary to refer to them.

Add notes under the entry for ‘body of shared meanings’:
• To describe the universe of discourse modeled by the body of shared meanings
• To emphasize that the body of shared meanings comprises only meanings