Abstract
Abstractions of various kinds play a vital role in conceptual modeling and knowledge representation. These mechanisms are, however, normally applied only to object types. In this paper we define the semantics and show the usefulness of applying similar mechanisms to types of relations among objects. Specifically, we show how cardinality constraints of an abstracted attribute relate to those of its constituents. To accomplish this we employ a formalism based on information triples (binary predicates) constituting elementary assertions about a Universe of Discource.
This research was supported by the National Swedish Board for Technical Development (STU).
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
ANSI/X3/SPARC, "Study Group on Data Base Management Systems: Interim Report 75-02-08", in ACM SIGMOD Newsletter, FDT, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1975.
G. Bracchi and B. Pernici, "SOS: A conceptual model for office information systems," Proceedings of ACM SIGMOD Database Week Conference, pp. 108–116, San Jose, Calif., May 1984.
R.J. Brachman, R.E. Fikes and H.J. Levesque, "Krypton: A Functional Approach to Knowledge Representation" in IEEE Computer, pp 67–73, October 1983.
R.J. Brachman and J.G. Schmolze, "An overview of the KL-ONE Knowledge Representation System", Cognitive Science, Vol.9, No. 2, April-June, 1985.
M.L. Brodie, J. Mylopoulos, J.W. Schmidt (Eds.), "On Conceptual Modelling — Perspectives from Artificial Intelligence, Databases and Programming Languages", Springer Verlag, New York, 1984.
M.L. Brodie, "On the Development of Data Models", in "On Conceptual Modelling — Perspectives from Artificial Intelligence, Databases and Programming Languages", pp 19–47, Springer Verlag, New York, 1984.
J. Bubenko and E. Lindencrona, Konceptuell Modellering, Informations-analys, Studentlitteratur, Lund, Sweden, 1984. (In Swedish)
L. Cardelli, P. Wegner, "On Understanding Types, Data Abstraction, and Polymorphism", in ACM Computing Surveys, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 471–522, December 1985.
P.P.S. Chen, "The Entity-relationship Model — Towards a Unified View of Data," ACM Transactions on Database Systems, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 9–36, 1976.
E.F. Codd, "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks.", CACM 13, No.6 (June 1970). Republished in Milestones of Research — Selected Papers 1958–1982: CACM 25th Aniversary Issue, CACM 26, No. 1, January 1983.
C.J. Date, "An Introduction to Database Systems, Volume I", Fourth Edition, Addison-Wesley Systems Programming Series, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1986.
R. Hull, "A Survey of Theoretical Research on Typed Complex Database Objects", in Databases, J Paredaens (Ed), Academic Press, London, 1987.
R. Hull and R. King, "Semantic Database Modeling: Survey, Applications and Research Issues", ACM Computing Surveys, vol 19, no 3, pp 201–260, 1987.
ISO, "Concepts and Terminology for the Conceptual Schema and the Information Base," Report N695, ISO/TC9/SC5/WG3, 1982. Eds J.J. van Griethuysen
E. Lindencrona-Ohlin, J.A. Bubenko jr, "Towards a Formal Syntax for a Data Modeling Language — DMOL", SYSLAB Working Paper no. 63 version 2, Department for Information Processing and Computer Science, University of Stockholm, S-106 91 Stockholm, December 1983.
P. Lyngbaek, D. McLeod, "Object Management in Distributed Information Systems", in ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 96–122, April 1984.
A. Makinouchi, "A Consideration on Normal Form of Not-Necessarily-Normalized Relations in the Relational Data Model", in Proceedings of the Conference on Very Large Data Bases (Tokyo, 1977), pp. 48–69, 1977.
T W Olle, H G Sol and A A Verrijn-Stuart (Editors), Information System Design Methodologies: a Comparative Review, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1982.
V. Pigman, "Krypton: Description of an Implementation, Volume 1", Artificial Laboratory, Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, Report no 40, Palo Alto, November 1984.
U. Schiel, A.L. Furtado, E.J. Neuhold, M.A. Casanova, "Towards Multi-level and Modular Conceptual Schema Specifications", in Information Systems, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 43–57, 1984.
J.F. Sowa, "Conceptual Structures — Information Processing in Mind and Machine", Addison-Wesley, 1984.
B. Wangler, "On the Use of Abstractions in Database Modeling: Propagation of Mapping Constraints under Attribute Abstraction", SYSLAB Report No. 61, Department for Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, January 1989.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1991 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Wangler, B. (1991). Attribute abstraction. In: Andersen, R., Bubenko, J.A., Sølvberg, A. (eds) Advanced Information Systems Engineering. CAiSE 1991. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 498. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-54059-8_97
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-54059-8_97
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-54059-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-47378-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive