Object class or association class? testing the user effect on cardinality interpretation

Authors:
Geert Poels;Frederik Gailly;Ann Maes;Roland Paemeleire
Affiliations:
Management Informatics Research Unit, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University – Ugent, Gent, Belgium;Management Informatics Research Unit, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University – Ugent, Gent, Belgium;Management Informatics Research Unit, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University – Ugent, Gent, Belgium;Management Informatics Research Unit, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University – Ugent, Gent, Belgium
Venue:
ER'05 Proceedings of the 24th international conference on Perspectives in Conceptual Modeling
Year:
2005

Citing 16
Cited 4

Comparing data modeling formalisms

Communications of the ACM
Formal deadlock elimination in an object oriented conceptual schema

Data & Knowledge Engineering
Conceptual schema and relational database design (2nd ed.)

Conceptual schema and relational database design (2nd ed.)
Existence Dependency: The Key to Semantic Integrity Between Structural and Behavioral Aspects of Object Types

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
An ontological analysis of the relationship construct in conceptual modeling

ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS)
Understanding relationships with attributes in entity-relationship diagrams

ICIS '99 Proceedings of the 20th international conference on Information Systems
Database Systems: A Practical Approach to Design, Implementation, and Management

Database Systems: A Practical Approach to Design, Implementation, and Management
Introduction to Database Systems

Introduction to Database Systems
The Guidelines of Modeling - An Approach to Enhance the Quality in Information Models

ER '98 Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling
Research Commentary: Information Systems and Conceptual Modeling--A Research Agenda

Information Systems Research
Evaluating modeling techniques based on models of learning

Communications of the ACM - Service-oriented computing
Using ontology to validate conceptual models

Communications of the ACM - Service-oriented computing
An experimental examination of property precedence in conceptual modelling

APCCM '04 Proceedings of the first Asian-Pacific conference on Conceptual modelling - Volume 31
Comparing a rule-based approach with a pattern-based approach at different levels of complexity of conceptual data modelling tasks

International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
What do the pictures mean?: guidelines for experimental evaluation of representation fidelity in diagrammatical conceptual modeling techniques

Data & Knowledge Engineering - Special issue: Quality in conceptual modeling
Effects of Local Versus Global Schema Diagrams on Verification and Communication in Conceptual Data Modeling

Journal of Management Information Systems

A report on the first international workshop on best practices of UML: (BP-UML'05)

ACM SIGMOD Record
Defining and validating metrics for assessing the understandability of entity-relationship diagrams

Data & Knowledge Engineering
Understanding understandability of conceptual models --- what are we actually talking about?

ER'12 Proceedings of the 31st international conference on Conceptual Modeling
Understanding Business Domain Models: The Effect of Recognizing Resource-Event-Agent Conceptual Modeling Structures

Journal of Database Management

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

In UML class diagrams, a many-to-many relationship with attributes can be represented by an association class or by a connecting object class. It is unclear which modeling construct is preferred in particular modeling scenarios. Because of lack of theory, this paper investigates the issue empirically. An experiment was conducted that tested the effect of representational form chosen on the performance of model users at cardinality interpretation tasks. It was shown that, controlling for cardinality knowledge, business users can better interpret the information that a UML class diagram conveys about a many-to-many relationship with attributes if this relationship is represented as an association class. The implication for ‘best practices' in UML modeling is that modelers should refrain from objectifying such relationships if the goal is an effective communication of domain semantics to users that are not modeling experts.