UML Schemas Research Articles

Semantic and Syntactic Interoperability Issues in the Context of SDI

Interoperability is one of the core concepts of Spatial Data Infrastructure due to the fact that exchange and access to spatial data is the foremost aim of any SDI. These issues are closely related to the concept of application schema that plays a significant role in interchanging spatial data and information across SDI. It is the basis of a successful data interchange between two systems as it defines the possible content and structure of data, thus it covers both semantic and syntactic interoperability. These matters also appear in a couple of questions concerning SDI including, among others, a model‑driven approach and data specifications.
 Spatial data exchange through SDI involves UML and GML application sche­mas that comprise semantic and syntactic interoperability respectively. How­ever, working out accurate and correct application schemas may be a challenge. Moreover, their faultiness or complexity may influence the ability to valid data interchange.
 The principal subject of this paper is to present the concept of interoperability in SDI, especially semantic and syntactic, as well as to discuss the role of UML and GML application schemas during the interoperable exchange of spatial data over SDI. Considerations were conducted focusing on the European SDI and the National SDI in Poland.

Considerations about the quality of UML and GML application schemas

Abstract Exchange of and access to spatial data is the principal goal of any Spatial Data Infrastructure, therefore, one of the key concepts of SDI is interoperability, especially semantic and syntactic. Whereas application schemas and quality issues are one of the aspects that have to be considered to ensure a successful data interchange in SDI. Two types of application schema are widely used in the European SDI as well as in the Polish SDI. They cover both semantic and syntactic interoperability and are an integral parts of spatial data specifications and relevant regulations in the form of data models. However, working out accurate and correct application schemas may be a challenge. Additionally, faulty or too complex application schemas can influence the ability for valid data interchange, and consequently, prevent achieving interoperability within SDI. Therefore, the capability to examine and estimate the UML and GML application schemas quality seems to be a worthwhile and important issue in the context of semantic and syntactic interoperability in SDI. The main subject of this article it to set out the context of performed studies, among others, the role of application schema in the interoperable data exchange, issues related to the concept of quality and its measures.

Historical Underground Structures as 3D Cadastral Objects

The need for accurate registration of underground objects in the 3D cadastre is becoming increasingly common throughout the world. Research studies conducted in this area mostly focus on objects related to transportation or other public utilities and services. However, in settlements with a long history, apart from new objects, there are also various historical objects underground. Such places are not fully discovered, and sometimes they are not even fully inventoried with surveying methods. The aim of this work therefore is to try to describe the possibility of introducing historical undergrounds to the real estate cadastre created for three dimensions, in case of its creation, and to check ground laser scanning as a method of measuring such objects in order to introduce them to the 3D cadastre. Considerations on the inclusion of underground historical objects into the three-dimensional cadastre database began with conceptual considerations. Their result is the elaboration of UML schemas describing relationships among 3D cadastre objects including underground objects. According to the authors, such underground objects should constitute a completely new class called ‘EGB_BuildingBlockUnderground3D’ and be part of the legal space of the entire building represented by the class ‘EGB_BuildingLegalSpace3D’ (the prefix EGB is an acronym of Polish cadastre name ‘Ewidencja Gruntów i Budynków’; in English, it stands for ‘Land and Building Cadastre’). In order to verify in practice the possibility of introducing historical underground objects into the 3D cadastre database, the inventory of the Underground Tourist Route in Rzeszów (Poland) was used. This route consists of a network of underground passageways and cellars built between the 14th and 18th centuries. The measurement was carried out with the application of the Faro Focus 3D terrestrial laser scanner. The underground inventory showed that at the time the current cadastre of land and buildings in Rzeszów was being founded, the boundaries of the cadastral parcels were established without knowing the location of the underground passageways under the Main Market Square. This resulted in a situation in which the objects located underground became parts of more than one cadastral parcel. If a 3D cadastre is created, such a situation must of course be recorded accordingly. The article proposes solutions for such situations.

Simplification of UML/OCL schemas for efficient reasoning

We define a method for simplifying UML schemas to improve efficiency of reasoning.The method deals with schemas with general 1st-order constraints (i.e. most OCL).The method can be incorporated in any UML/OCL reasoning tool.Experiments show time improvements from x2 to x370 in different tools/schemas. Ensuring the correctness of a conceptual schema is an essential task in order to avoid the propagation of errors during software development. The kind of reasoning required to perform such task is known to be exponential for UML class diagrams alone and even harder when considering OCL constraints. Motivated by this issue, we propose an innovative method aimed at removing constraints and other UML elements of the schema to obtain a simplified one that preserve the same reasoning outcomes. In this way, we can reason about the correctness of the initial artifact by reasoning on a simplified version of it. Thus, the efficiency of the reasoning process is significantly improved. In addition, since our method is independent from the reasoning engine used, any reasoning method may benefit from it.

4D Trajectory Modeling and Pub/Sub Mechanism Based on Interoperability Mode

With the rapid development of air traffic management, a number of new technologies will replace today control method. In the future, aircrafts can keep appropriate interval according to control intention. And controllers will command the whole situation in real-time. On the basis of the 4D trajectory design and plan of American in air traffic management, we establish 4D trajectory model by UML and XML Schema. Then the Pub/Sub mechanism is modeled and analyzed. Through analyzing the QoS data synchronization, we can regulate data exchange which under 4D trajectory interoperability effectively.

Automated reasoning on UML conceptual schemas with derived information and queries

ContextIt is critical to ensure the quality of a software system in the initial stages of development, and several approaches have been proposed to ensure that a conceptual schema correctly describes the user’s requirements. ObjectiveThe main goal of this paper is to perform automated reasoning on UML schemas containing arbitrary constraints, derived roles, derived attributes and queries, all of which must be specified by OCL expressions. MethodThe UML/OCL schema is encoded in a first order logic formalisation, and an existing reasoning procedure is used to check whether the schema satisfies a set of desirable properties. Due to the undecidability of reasoning in highly expressive schemas, such as those considered here, we also provide a set of conditions that, if satisfied by the schema, ensure that all properties can be checked in a finite period of time. ResultsThis paper extends our previous work on reasoning on UML conceptual schemas with OCL constraints by considering derived attributes and roles that can participate in the definition of other constraints, queries and derivation rules. Queries formalised in OCL can also be validated to check their satisfiability and to detect possible equivalences between them. We also provide a set of conditions that ensure finite reasoning when they are satisfied by the schema under consideration. ConclusionThis approach improves upon previous work by allowing automated reasoning for more expressive UML/OCL conceptual schemas than those considered so far.

Hybrid methodology for data warehouse conceptual design by UML schemas

Context Data warehouse conceptual design is based on the metaphor of the cube, which can be derived from either requirement-driven or data-driven methodologies. Each methodology has its own advantages. The first allows designers to obtain a conceptual schema very close to the user needs but it may be not supported by the effective data availability. On the contrary, the second ensures a perfect traceability and consistence with the data sources—in fact, it guarantees the presence of data to be used in analytical processing—but does not preserve from missing business user needs. To face this issue, the necessity emerged in the last years to define hybrid methodologies for conceptual design. Objective The objective of the paper is to use a hybrid methodology based on different multidimensional models in order to gather all advantages of each of them. Method The proposed methodology integrates the requirement-driven strategy with the data-driven one, in that order, possibly performing alterations of functional dependencies on UML multidimensional schemas reconciled with data sources. Results As case study, we illustrate how our methodology can be applied to the university environment. Furthermore, we evaluate quantitatively the benefits of this methodology by comparing it with some popular and conventional methodologies. Conclusion In conclusion, we highlight how the hybrid methodology improves the conceptual schema quality. Finally, we outline our present work devoted to introduce automatic design techniques in the methodology on the basis of the logical programming.

OCL-Lite: Finite reasoning on UML/OCL conceptual schemas

To ensure the quality of an information system we must guarantee the correctness of the conceptual schema that represents the knowledge about its domain. The high expressivity of UML schemas annotated with textual OCL constraints enforces the need for automated reasoning techniques. These techniques should be both terminating and complete to be effectively used in practice. In this paper we identify an expressive fragment of the OCL language that ensures these properties. In this way, we overcome the limitations of current techniques when reasoning on such a fragment. As a consequence, we also have that Description Logics can be appropriately used to reason on UML conceptual schemas with arbitrary OCL constraints. We also show how current tools based on different approaches can be used to reason on conceptual schemas enriched with (a decidable fragment of) OCL constraints.

A scalable and integrative system for pathway bioinformatics and systems biology.

Progress in systems biology depends on developing scalable informatics tools to predictively model, visualize, and flexibly store information about complex biological systems. Scalability of these tools, as well as their ability to integrate within larger frameworks of evolving tools, is critical to address the multi-scale and size complexity of biological systems. Using current software technology, such as self-generation of database and object code from UML schemas, facilitates rapid updating of a scalable expert assistance system for modeling biological pathways. Distribution of key components along with connectivity to external data sources and analysis tools is achieved via a web service interface. All sigmoid modeling software components and supplementary information are available through: http://www.igb.uci.edu/servers/sb.html.

Methods and Technologies of XML Data Modeling for IP Mode Intelligent Measuring & Controlling System

This paper presents the IP mode intelligent measuring & controlling system (IMIMCS). Based on object-oriented modeling technology of UML and XML Schema, the innovative methods and technologies of some key problems for XML data modeling in the IMIMCS were especially discussed, including refinement for systemic business by means of use-case diagram of UML, the confirmation of the content of XML data model and logic relationship of the objects of XML Schema with the aid of class diagram of UML, the mapping rules from the UML object model to XML Schema. Finally, the application of the IMIMCS based on XML for a modern greenhouse was presented. The results show that the modeling methods of the measuring & controlling data in the IMIMCS involving the multi-layer structure and many operating systems process strong reliability and flexibility, guarantee uniformity of complex XML documents and meet the requirement of data communication across platform.

Developing the earthquake markup language and database with UML and XML schema

Seismic information is commonly shared across networks, and stored in heterogeneous databases that are maintained by different and autonomous groups. Because the metadata of the seismic information is generally not structured, information loss commonly occurs when data is transmitted from one source to another. Minimizing such information loss and enhancing information interchange over the Web require construction of specific markup languages for each part of seismology. The sub-disciplinary data syntax and vocabularies allow construction of corresponding relational databases to store and interchange the structured data. Developing modular data structures and databases for each sub-discipline allows composition of new languages through reuse, and enables future extension of the vocabulary and maintenance of the knowledge base. In this paper, we show how to design the conceptual and logical models for a small set of seismology that deals with earthquake ( EarthquakeML). We discuss the application of the UML to the design and mapping of the object model into W3 XML Schema and database. The emphasis is on designing components that can be reused across discipline, and reduce redundancies by developing type libraries. We show how to map the XML schema into a relational data model; and implement the EarthquakeDB with the Microsoft Access DBMS.

Using TRIPLE for business agents on the Semantic Web

This paper presents TRIPLE [Sintek and Decker, First International Semantic Web Conference, 2002], a modular rule language for the Semantic Web [Weaving the Web, The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by Its Inventor, 1999], and its usage for business agents. TRIPLE is based on Horn logic [Foundations of Logic Programming, 1984] and borrows many basic features from F-Logic [J. ACM 42 (1995) 741] but is especially designed for querying and transforming RDF models [ http://www.w3.org/RDF/]. TRIPLE can be viewed as a successor of SiLRI (Simple Logic-based RDF Interpreter [QL’98—The Query Languages Workshop, 1998]). One of the most important differences to F-Logic and SiLRI is that TRIPLE does not have fixed semantics for object-oriented features like classes and inheritance. Its modular architecture allows such features to be easily defined for different object-oriented and other data models like UML, Topic Maps, or RDF Schema [ http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/CR-rdf-schema-20000327/]. Description logics extensions of RDF (Schema) like OIL [ http://www.ontoknowledge.org/oil/] and DAML+OIL [ http://www.daml.org/2001/03/daml+oil-index.html] that cannot be fully handled by Horn logic are provided as modules that interact with a description logic classifier, e.g. FaCT [ http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~horrocks/FaCT/], resulting in a hybrid rule language. This paper sketches syntax and semantics of TRIPLE and shows how it can be used to declaratively specify the behavior of (business) agents.