NoER (Not Only ER)

★ Award · ER 2026

Best Poster/Demo Award at ER 2026

NoER won the Best Poster/Demo Award at the 45th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER 2026), held in St. John’s, Canada, on 5–8 October 2026. ER is the leading international conference on conceptual modeling: the award recognises the quality of the tool and the soundness of its approach, which brings conceptual design back to document databases.

The demo paper is published in the ER 2026 Companion Proceedings (CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol. 4279): read the paper (PDF).

Conceptual design for NoSQL databases, with AI-assisted translation

NoER (Not Only ER) starts from a simple observation: document databases like MongoDB have too often turned data modeling into a purely application-driven exercise, skipping the conceptual phase that’s standard practice in relational databases. NoER brings conceptual design back into the NoSQL world, using an extended version of the Entity-Relationship model (called ER_d) built specifically for document-native structures.

The tool guides users from a conceptual schema all the way to a JSON schema ready for MongoDB Atlas, through a translation assistant that applies document design patterns (embedding, referencing, extended referencing, subset) based on cardinalities and participation constraints.

Three translation modes, from manual to fully AI-guided

1. Manual pattern selection — for each relationship, choose among the MongoDB patterns the system offers.
2. Guided selection — NoER suggests a pattern based on data access and update frequency, along with each option’s pros and cons.
3. AI-driven translation — NoER generates a complete translation plan for the whole schema, with rationale and confidence level for every relationship. Integrated models include Claude Haiku 4.5.

Video tutorial