SAIFtalk is a language which can represent any data or class which may described by the SAIF data model. It has two components, Class Syntax Notation (CSN) and Object Syntax Notation (OSN). CSN is the shorthand which is used to describe SAIF class definitions. It is a subset of SAIFtalk. OSN is a language which is used to construct readable representations of instances of the objects which are described by the SAIF data model. It is also a subset of SAIFtalk. It could be said the SAIFtalk = CSN + OSN, that is, SAIFtalk is the union of CSN and OSN. (The grammers of OSN and CSN are such that they may occur interspersed within a file and be able to be correctly parsed.)
SAIFtalk allows C++ style comments to be embedded within it anywhere. Such comments, which are completely optional, start with // and are terminated by the end-of-line. This allows users to embed English descriptions or notations within SAIFtalk definitions.