Semantics in object-oriented data models (abstract)

Abstract

Although object-oriented data models as a design tool for software development products is promising, nevertheless the semantics provided by the current contemporary object-oriented data models do not adequately support the design, evolution, and reuse of complex information systems. The semantic expressiveness of the abstraction techniques such as encapsulation, inheritance, and messaging for modeling application environment employee an overly simple object structures. The use of these simple object structures limit the capabilities of these techniques to describe the meaning of these systems which inevitably cause the loss of the information about the system.In this paper we present an object-oriented model which is based on structural constructs that are highly user-oriented and expressive of the application environment. Such as object-oriented model provide a rich set of mechanisms to allow the direct modeling of system semantics. Therefore, our goal is to establish a necessary set of semantic concepts for object-oriented data models that will enable the designer to naturally and directly incorporate more of the semantics of a system into its model. Such a semantics-based object-oriented data model will support: (1) Natural and efficient description of complex object structure; (2) Explicitly express relationships between objects; (3) Explicitly express extensive integrity constraints and exceptions on relationships between objects; (4) Express different levels of abstractions which allow the user to see objects from an operational or a structural view. Finally, we discuss reusability and extensibility of such a semantic object-oriented data model.