Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Information Rules (SBVR)
Originated in December 11, 2007. This is a new standard to represent business semantics for machines.

The majority of specialists in the field of semantics focus on what symbols denote, rather than what they connote. There are two fundamental tests for whether a machine is 'doing semantics'.

Test 1: Can the machine determine that some instance (of something) does or does not fall into some class of things the machine knows about? For example, if a machine were handed a fruit electronically could it determine that the fruit was or was not an apple? What the machine 'knows' about the fruit would have to satisfy all the encoded rules for 'apple-ness'. Representing such rules is a primary focus of semantic languages, including in particular those proposed for the semantic web.

Test 2: Can the machine determine whether or not two expressions mean the same? For example, suppose humans take customer and client (and perhaps cliente in Spanish) to designate the same concept (think synonyms). If humans specify as much to machines, then the machines will 'know' the meaning denoted by the symbols is the same one, not different.

The essence of SBVR then turns out to be a vocabulary a painfully deep and complete vocabulary covering all the discrete ideas needed to structure the semantics of rule-ish sentences

What makes SBVR so unique?

SBVR is a vocabulary (or more accurately, a set of inter-related sub-vocabularies) that permits the capture of semantics for the kinds of sentences commonly used to express business rules.

Why SBVR practices?

1. You need to retain business know-how. You need your operational business knowledge to be explicit, rather than tacit. Your company runs the risk of losing key people. You need a pragmatic approach to knowledge retention.

2. Your business doesn't really know what its business rules are. You need a better way to manage and disseminate business rules consistently across various parts of the organization.

3. You need to develop operational decision logic and other kinds of shared, knowledge-rich specifications directly with business people in business terms.

References:

[1] SBVR part 1

[2] SBVR part 2