Conceptual Modeling of Information Systems

ISBN-13: 9783642072567 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 455 str.

Antoni Olive

Opis

It is now more than fifty years since the first paper on formal specifications of an information system was published by Young and Kent. Even if the term conceptual model was not used at that time, the basic intention of the abstract specification was to a large extent the same as for developing conceptual models today: to arrive at a precise, abstract, and hardware - dependent model of the informational and time characteristics of a data processing problem. The abstract notation should enable the analyst to - ganize the problem around any piece of hardware. In other words, the p- pose of an abstract specification was for it to be used as an invariant basis for designing different alternative implementations, perhaps even using different hardware components. Research and practice of abstract modeling of information systems has since the late fifties progressed through many milestones and achie- ments. In the sixties, pioneering work was carried out by the CODASYL Development committee who in 1962 presented the Information Al- bra . At about the same time Borje Langefors published his elementary message and e-file approach to specification of information systems. The next decade, the seventies, was characterized by the introduction of a large number of new types of, as they were called, data models . We saw the birth of, for instance, Binary Data Models, Entity Relationship Models, Relational Data Models, Semantic Data Models, and Temporal Deductive Models."

Recenzje

"The book is one of the most informative and comprehensive texts on conceptual modeling published to date. It is very appropriate for students of advanced level university courses in information systems, requirements engineering, or in data base design, as well as for qualified practitioners in the field." - Janis Bubenko, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

 

"Antoni Olivé has taken the time to create a book that is certain to become essential reading for students of conceptual modeling in information systems engineering." - Arne Solvberg, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway

 

"The text is advanced in notions and concepts, but is highly educational and informative, containing very interesting ideas explained and illustrated in detail. The most interesting aspect is that the text combines formalization with the fundamentals of information systems engineering under a holistic approach." - Lefteris Angelis, Computing Reviews, May 2008

Spis treści

Entity Types.- Relationship Types.- Cardinality Constraints.- Particular Kinds of Relationship Type.- Reification.- Generic Relationship Types.- Derived Types.- Integrity Constraints.- Taxonomies.- Domain Events.- Action Request Events.- State Transition Diagrams.- Statecharts.- Use Cases.- Case Study.- Metamodeling.- The MOF and XMI.

O autorze

Antoni Olivé is a professor of information systems at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona. He has worked in this field during over 25 years. His main interests have been, and are, conceptual modeling, requirements engineering, information systems design and databases.

Antoni Olivé was the recipient of the DKE-ER Elsevier award for his contribution to the Intl. Conf. on Conceptual Modeling (ER'2003) and was Program Co-chair of ER 2006 - the 25th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling.

Blurb

When designing an information system, conceptual modeling is the activity that elicits and describes the general knowledge the system needs to know. This description, called the conceptual schema, is necessary in order to develop an information system. Recently, many researchers and professionals share a vision in which the conceptual schema becomes the only important description to be created, as the system implementation will be automatically constructed from its schema – this is e.g. the basic idea behind OMG’s Model Driven Architecture.

Olivé’s textbook explains in detail the principles of conceptual modeling independently from particular methods and languages and shows how to apply them in real-world projects. He covers all aspects of the engineering process from structural modeling over behavioral modeling to meta-modeling, and completes the presentation with an extensive case study based on the osCommerce system, an online store-management software program freely available under the GNU General Public License. His presentation is based on well-known industry standards like UML and OCL as a particular conceptual modeling language, yet also delivers the basics of the formal logical language background.

Written for computer science students in classes on information systems modeling as well as for professionals feeling the need to formalize their experiences or to update their knowledge, Olivé delivers here a comprehensive treatment of all aspects of the modeling process. His book is complemented by lots of exercises and additional online teaching material.