Modeling techniques for multi-level abstraction

  • Authors:

  • Bernd Neumayr;Michael Schrefl;Bernhard Thalheim

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Business Informatics, Data & Knowledge Engineering, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Linz, Austria;Department of Business Informatics, Data & Knowledge Engineering, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Linz, Austria;Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Christian Albrechts University Kiel, Kiel, Germany

  • Venue:
  • The evolution of conceptual modeling
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

Employing multi-level abstraction in modeling refers to representing objects at multiple levels of one or more abstraction hierarchies, mainly classification, aggregation and generalization. Multiple representation, however, leads to accidental complexity, complicating modeling and extension. Several modeling techniques, like powertypes, deep instantiation, materialization, m-objects, HERM, and the component model may be used to reduce unnecessary complexity with multilevel abstraction. This chapter compares these modeling techniques using four comparison criteria: (1) compactness (modular and redundancyfree models), (2) query flexibility (number and kind of pre-defined entry points for querying), (3) heterogeneous level-hierarchies, and (4) multiple relationship-abstractions (such as between relationship occurrence and relationship type).