Classifying and reusing conceptual schemas

Abstract

The paper presents a methodological approach to guide the application engineer to construct a Library of Entity-Relationship schemas, classified by means of indexing criteria and clustering techniques, and to extract reusable components from the existing selected schemas. Reusable components are defined as generic entities with associated meta-entities providing guidelines for reuse in a given application. Generic entities are derived from the analysis of the entities belonging to similar schemas within clusters of the Library. A set of reuse guidelines in form of meta-entities are given, suggesting how generic entities can be modified and tailored according to the needs of the application to be developed.