The Association Construct in Conceptual Modelling - An Analysis Using the Bunge Ontological Model

Associations are a widely used construct of object-oriented languages. However, the meaning of associations for conceptual modelling of application domains remains unclear. This paper employs ontological analysis to first examine the software semantics of the association construct, and shows that they cannot be transferred to conceptual modelling. The paper then explores associations as ’semantic connections’ between objects and shows that this meaning cannot be transferred to conceptual modelling either. As an alternative to the use of associations, the paper proposes using shared properties, a construct that is rooted directly in ontology. An example from a case study demonstrates how this is applied. The paper then shows an efficient implementation in object-oriented programming languages to maintain seamless transitions between analysis, design, and implementation.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: CAISE
• Authors: Joerg Evermann
• Keywords: CAISE 2005, Conceptual Modelling, Object-oriented Languages, Paper