Construction of Concepts and Decomposition of Objects

Locuratolo E., Palomäki J.

Concepts; intension; extension; partitioning; conceptual modeling 

This paper presents an approach that transports at the concept level mapping algorithms from classes of objects supported by semantic data models, called semantic classes, to classes of objects supported by object systems, called object classes. Both these models are defined as acyclic oriented graphs of classes. In semantic classes, each object instance can belong to many different classes, thus enhancing flexibility. In object classes, each object instance can belong to one and only one class, thus enhancing efficiency. The proposed approach can be useful when we are, for instance, designing an object, which does not yet exists, but about which we have plenty of conceptual information and of which we want to build a conceptual model.

Source: ISTI Technical reports, 2011