Conceptual Database Model Research Articles

Automatic conceptual database design based on heterogeneous source artifacts

The article presents an approach to the automatic derivation of conceptual database models from heterogeneous source artifacts. The approach is based on the integration of conceptual database models that are derived from source artifacts of one single type by already existing tools, whereby those models possess limited certainty given their limited completeness and correctness. The uncertainty of the automatically derived models from specific source artifacts is expressed and managed through the effectiveness measure of the generation of specific concepts of the input conceptual database models. The approach is implemented by the DBomnia tool - the first online web-based tool enabling automatic derivation of conceptual database models from heterogeneous source artifacts (business process models and textual specifications). DBomnia employs other pre-existing tools to derive conceptual models from sources of the same type and then integrates those models. The case study-based evaluation proves that the implemented approach enables effective automatic derivation of the conceptual database model from a set of heterogeneous source artifacts. Moreover, the automatic derivation of the conceptual database model from a set of heterogeneous source artifacts is more effective than each independent automatic derivation of the conceptual database model from sources of one single type only.

МОДЕЛИ И ФУНКЦИИ ИНТЕЛЛЕКТУАЛЬНОЙ СИСТЕМЫ ПОДДЕРЖКИ ПРИНЯТИЯ УПРАВЛЕНЧЕСКИХ РЕШЕНИЙ В ЭНЕРГОСИСТЕМАХ

The aim of the work is to study models and intelligent systems for supporting management decisions in energy systems. The article is devoted to solving the problem of adequate description of systems for supporting management decision-making in energy systems, as well as analysing models and functions of intelligent system models for supporting management decision-making in energy systems. As part of the research, methods of generalization and systematization of models, functions of an intelligent management decision support system, as well as systemic, evolutionary, categorical and modelling methods are used to form a conceptual model of the Transnistrian Moldavian Republic power systems which is necessary to further develop a mathematical model of intelligent system for supporting management decisions in energy systems. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that a conceptual model of a decision information system for the power supply control in the power systems of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic is developed. The results of the study include analysing the subject area and developing a conceptual database model and the information support structure in the energy systems of the Transnistrian Moldavian Republic. Findings state that to develop an information system project, a system analysis of the energy industry, in particular information processes in the power supply is performed. The main aims and objectives of the project are determined, which become the basis for constructing an objective tree.

A Model of an Automated System for Evaluating the Quality of Startups in the Field of Software Engineering

This article introduces an automated system for evaluating startups in the field of Software Engineering. It outlines the system's components, including database management, expert assessments, and project viability estimation. The article also presents a conceptual database model and discusses the user interface for assessment calculations. The system is designed to enhance the evaluation of Software Engineering startups and holds potential applications in various scenarios.

Automatic derivation of the initial conceptual database model from a set of business process models

The article presents an approach aimed at automatically deriving the initial conceptual database model from a set of business process models. The approach proposes the incremental synthesis of the target model by iteratively composing the partial conceptual database models that are derived from the models contained in the source set. The approach is implemented by the AMADEOS tool, which is the first online web-based tool enabling the automatic derivation of the conceptual database model from a set of business process models. The experimental evaluation proves that the implemented approach enables effective automatic derivation of the initial conceptual database model.

Methods and problems of analyzing process diagrams

Process diagrams of are widely used to develop conceptual database models, in particular to establish the types of relationships between process elements. For some types of process diagrams, methods have been developed for converting them into sets of relationships. However, there are objective reasons that make it difficult to convert process diagrams into adequate and complete sets of relationships.

A conceptual database model for the identification of degraded areas and areas proposed for planned revitalisation

Abstract For revitalisation programmes to be effective, territorial governments have to introduce consolidated measures that support the planning, organisation and implementation of revitalisation measures to benefit local communities and economies, and to alleviate crisis situations in degraded areas. Such measures require unlimited access to data that accurately describe social, economic and environmental conditions. In view of the above, the main aim of this study was to propose a conceptual database model for the identification of degraded areas and areas proposed for planned revitalisation under revitalisation programmes implemented in urbanised rural areas. The detailed objectives of the presented research were to describe the components of the proposed database and the sources of data for developing municipal revitalisation programmes. A diagram of the database model supporting the initial stages of revitalisation was also presented. The research methodology involved analyses, inference and deduction. A questionnaire survey conducted among geography, spatial planning, urban development and environmental experts was used as a research tool in the study. The results of the questionnaire confirmed the validity of the components of the proposed database model.

Automatic derivation of conceptual database models from differently serialized business process models

The existing tools that aim to derive data models from business process models are typically able to process the source models represented by one single notation and also serialized in one specific way. However, the standards (e.g., BPMN) enable different serialization formats and also provide serialization flexibility, which leads to various implementations of the standard in different modeling tools and results in differently serialized models in practice, which therefore significantly constraints usability of the existing model-driven tools. In this article, we present an approach to automatic derivation of conceptual database models from business process models represented by different notations, with particular focus on differently serialized process models. A deterministic rule-based approach is proposed to overcome the serialization specificities and to enable extraction of characteristic elements from differently serialized process models. Based on the proposed approach, we implemented an online web-based model-driven tool named AMADEOS, which is able to automatically derive conceptual database models from process models represented by different notations and also differently serialized. The experimental results show that the proposed approach and implemented tool enable successful extraction of specific elements from differently serialized process models and enable derivation of the target conceptual database models with very high completeness and precision.

Automated two-phase business model-driven synthesis of conceptual database models

Existing approaches to business process model-driven synthesis of data models are characterized by a direct synthesis of a target model based on source models represented by concrete notations, where the synthesis is supported by monolithic (semi)automatic transformation programs. This article presents an approach to automated two-phase business process model-driven synthesis of conceptual database models. It is based on the introduction of a domain specific language (DSL) as an intermediate layer between different source notations and the target notation, which splits the synthesis into two phases: (i) automatic extraction of specific concepts from the source model and their DSL-based representation, and (ii) automated generation of the target model based on the DSL-based representation of the extracted concepts. The proposed approach enables development of modular transformation tools for automatic synthesis of the target model based on business process models represented by different concrete notations. In this article we present an online generator, which implements the proposed approach. The generator is implemented as a web-based, service-oriented tool, which enables automatic generation of the initial conceptual database model represented by the UML class diagram, based on business models represented by two concrete notations.

An experiment in model-driven conceptual database design

The article presents the results of an experiment we conducted with database professionals in order to evaluate an approach to automatic design of the initial conceptual database model based on collaborative business process models. The source business process model is represented by BPMN, while the target conceptual model is represented by the UML class diagram. The results confirm those already obtained in a case-study-based evaluation, as well as those of an earlier controlled experiment conducted with undergraduate students. The evaluation implies that the proposed approach and implemented generator enable automatic generation of the target conceptual model with a high percentage of completeness and precision. The experiment also confirms that the automatically generated model can be efficiently used as a starting point for manual design of the target model, since it significantly shortens the estimated efforts and actual time spent to obtain the target model in contrast to the manual design from scratch.

TOWARDS INTRODUCING A GEOCODING INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR GREENLAND

Abstract. Currently, addressing practices in Greenland do not support geocoding. Addressing points on a map by geographic coordinates is vital for emergency services such as police and ambulance for avoiding ambiguities in finding incident locations (Government of Greenland, 2010) Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the current addressing practices in Greenland. Asiaq (Asiaq, 2011) is a public enterprise of the Government of Greenland which holds three separate databases regards addressing and place references: – list of locality names (towns, villages, farms), – technical base maps (including road center lines not connected with names, and buildings), – the NIN registry (The Land Use Register of Greenland - holds information on the land allotments and buildings in Greenland). The main problem is that these data sets are not interconnected, thus making it impossible to address a point in a map with geographic coordinates in a standardized way. The possible solutions suffer from the fact that Greenland has a scattered habitation pattern and the generalization of the address assignment schema is a difficult task. A schema would be developed according to the characteristics of the settlement pattern, e.g. cities, remote locations and place names. The aim is to propose an ontology for a common postal address system for Greenland. The main part of the research is dedicated to the current system and user requirement engineering. This allowed us to design a conceptual database model which corresponds to the user requirements, and implement a small scale prototype. Furthermore, our research includes resemblance findings in Danish and Greenland's addressing practices, data dictionary for establishing Greenland addressing system's logical model and enhanced entity relationship diagram. This initial prototype of the Greenland addressing system could be used to evaluate and build the full architecture of the addressing information system for Greenland. Using software engineering methods the implementation can be done according to the developed data model and initial database prototype. Development of the Greenland addressing system using a modern GIS and database technology would ease the work and improve the quality of public services such as: postal delivery, emergency response, customer/business relationship management, administration of land, utility planning and maintenance and public statistical data analysis.

DATABASE MODELLING IN CARTOGRAPHY FOR THE “ATLAS OF ELECTION”

Today maps are prepared in Geographic Information Systems (GIS software) and based on data stored in a database. In the stage of the conceptual database design, the graphic editor of a database model is recommended. The structure of data is often under the influence of the cartographic requests. For example, new data may be added only for visualization purposes. All database structures for a base data and a cartographical data can be defined in a conceptual database model before creation of a physical database model. Database modelling is demonstrated in ArcGIS Diagrammer software in this article. Design of a cartographic database model for the book “Atlas of Election to the Olomouc Region Council” is used as an example. Moreover, steps of a model creation, detail structure and relationships in the model are also mentioned. The cartographical database model of the “Atlas of Election” illustrates cartographical influence to the database structure.

Development of a GIS-based monitoring and management system for underground coal mining safety

Abstract Coal mine safety is of paramount concern to mining industry. Mine accidents have various causes and consequences including catastrophic failure of mine, substantial economic losses and most notably loss of lives. Therefore, any initiative in mine monitoring is of vital importance for progressing safety surveillance and maintenance. This paper presents the development of a geographic information system (GIS)-based monitoring and management system for underground mine safety in three levels as constructive safety, surveillance and maintenance, and emergency. The developed model integrates the database design and management to the monitoring system implementation which encompasses query and analysis operations with the help of web and desktop applications. Interactive object-oriented graphical user interfaces (GUIs) were developed to visualize information about the entities gathered from the model and also to provide analysis operations based on the graphical representations and demonstrations using data tables and map objects. The research methodology essentially encompasses five main stages: (i) designing a conceptual database model; (ii) development of a logical model in terms of entity-relationship (ER) diagrams; (iii) development of a physical model based on physical constraints and requirements; (iv) development of GUIs and implementation of the developed model, analysis and queries; (v) verification and validation of the created model for Omerler underground coal mine in Turkey. The proposed system is expected to be an efficient tool for improving and maintaining healthy standards in underground coal mines which can possibly be extended to a national GIS infrastructure.

Keys, Nominals, and Concrete Domains

Many description logics (DLs) combine knowledge representation on an abstract, logical level with an interface to 'concrete' domains like numbers and strings with built-in predicates such as >, +, and prefix-of. These hybrid DLs have turned out to be useful in several application areas, such as reasoning about conceptual database models. We propose to further extend such DLs with key constraints that allow the expression of statements like 'US citizens are uniquely identified by their social security number'. Based on this idea, we introduce a number of natural description logics and perform a detailed analysis of their decidability and computational complexity. It turns out that naive extensions with key constraints easily lead to undecidability, whereas more careful extensions yield NExpTime-complete DLs for a variety of useful concrete domains.

A database evolution taxonomy for object-oriented databases

Like any other database application, object database applications are subject to evolution. Evolution, however, is a critical requirement in object-oriented databases as it is a fundamental characteristic of complex applications such as computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM) and office information systems. Object-oriented databases are inherently suited to supporting such applications. In this paper we present a database evolution taxonomy for object-oriented databases. We describe a conceptual database model and use it to define the taxonomy. We also present the various invariants and rules governing the various evolution operations. The execution sequence of rules is described. An implementation of the database model and the evolution taxonomy in the Semi-Autonomous Database Evolution System (SADES), is discussed. The implementation employs aspect-oriented programming techniques to provide a flexible means of transforming objects upon evolution, and implementing some application-specific evolution primitives. A case study compares the evolution taxonomy with existing evolution approaches. The comparison demonstrates that the taxonomy and its corresponding implementation in SADES provide improved coverage of the fundamental evolution operations to which an object database might be subjected. At the same time, erosion of the database structure is avoided by maintaining a coherent and comprehensible view of historical changes. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Conceptual database modeling: a method for enabling end users (radiologists) to understand and develop their information management applications.

As medical technology advances at a rapid pace, clinicians become further and further removed from the design of their own technological tools. This is particularly evident with information management. For radiologists, clinical histories, patient reports, and other pertinent information require sophisticated tools for data handling. However, as databases grow more powerful and sophisticated, systems require the expertise of programmers and information technology personnel. The radiologist, the clinician end-user, must maintain involvement in the development of system tools to insure effective information management. Conceptual database modeling is a design method that serves to bridge the gap between the technological aspects of information management and its clinical applications. Conceptual database modeling involves developing information systems in simple language so that anyone can have input into the overall design. This presentation describes conceptual database modeling, using object role modeling, as a means by which end-users (clinicians) may participate in database development.

Conceptual database modeling for understanding and developing information management applications.

In response to rising health care costs and changing expectations concerning the quality of health care, information management is becoming increasingly important in the practice of medicine; more specifically, it is beginning to effect significant changes in radiology practice and patient care. Radiologic applications of information management include reporting diagnostic information generated from film interpretation as well as tracking utilization patterns of different imaging modalities and the variability of clinical outcomes, documenting the type of information sought by and provided to clinicians, and evaluating departmental quality standards and performance goals. Conceptual database modeling enables radiologists to understand and participate in the development of information systems, thereby improving the likelihood of successful results. In object-role modeling, groups of relevant objects and roles are identified and used to create elementary facts that form the "building blocks" for information models. The resultant models can easily be communicated, reviewed, and revised, allowing decreased development time and optimizing inclusion of relevant features in the target relational database. Increasing the amount of clinical and management input in the development process may help information systems better meet user needs, become accepted and more often used, and ultimately succeed.

A framework for studying human error behavior in conceptual database modeling

A framework is developed to explain human error behavior in modeling conceptual databases. The framework is based on the notion of directness distance or ‘gulf’ suggested in recent literature. It specifies four aspects of ‘gulf’ in the context of conceptual database design - syntax, mapping, rules, and consistency. Based on the model, six types of errors are suggested - syntactic, abstraction, simplification, overload, convergence, and divergence. These are then matched to errors found in four empirical studies on database representation. Four types of errors - convergence, abstraction, simplification and overload - were typically found in these studies. The paper provides design guidelines to prevent these errors.

An expert system for conceptual schema design: a machine learning approach

In this paper, we report the design specifications and design principles of EXIS, an expert system for conceptual schema design for an inofrmation system currently under development. We focus on machine learning aspects applicable to schema design. The main idea can be highlighted better if integrated with a complete framework of the design environment. Therefore, we first describe a conceptual database model consisting of a semantic model and an event model. Hereafter, we present our approach to design knowledge acquisition and representation which is based on inducing schema design rules from examples. We also present relevant aspects of the theory of Rough Sets and the learning method used in our system. Throughout the paper we discuss several concepts and techniques for expert system design which proved very useful and can be adapted to any other application. Here we tend to avoid being ambiguous by using first order logic to express our ideas.†

Database description with SDM

SDM is a high-level semantics-based database description and structuring formalism (database model) for databases. This database model is designed to capture more of the meaning of an application environment than is possible with contemporary database models. An SDM specification describes a database in terms of the kinds of entities that exist in the application environment, the classifications and groupings of those entities, and the structural interconnections among them. SDM provides a collection of high-level modeling primitives to capture the semantics of an application environment. By accommodating derived information in a database structural specification, SDM allows the same information to be viewed in several ways; this makes it possible to directly accommodate the variety of needs and processing requirements typically present in database applications. The design of the present SDM is based on our experience in using a preliminary version of it. SDM is designed to enhance the effectiveness and usability of database systems. An SDM database description can serve as a formal specification and documentation tool for a database; it can provide a basis for supporting a variety of powerful user interface facilities, it can serve as a conceptual database model in the database design process; and, it can be used as the database model for a new kind of database management system.

Relativism and views in a conceptual data base model

The purpose of the Pingree Park Workshop was to bring together practitioners from the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Database Management (DB), and Programming Languages (PL), to discover common issues, and to explore commonalities and differences in approaches to these issues. At the risk of being superficial let me try to summarily characterize the three fields and point to where I think they may fruitfully interact. It seems to me that at its best, AI is an interdisciplinary science of cognition. It attempts to understand the bases for natural cognition, primarily by developing models of structures and processes that underlie cognition. By incorporation into interactive systems these models can be both exploited as artificially intelligent technology and explored for their adequacy in explaining natural cognition.