Preserving semantics when transforming conceptual spatio-temporal schemas

Abstract

Conceptual models provide powerful constructs for representing the semantics of real-world application domains. However, much of this semantics may be lost when translating a conceptual schema into a logical or a physical schema. The reason for this semantic loss is the limited expressive power of logical and physical models. In this paper we present a methodology that allows to transform conceptual schemas while preserving their semantics. This is realized with the help of integrity constraints that are automatically generated at the logical and physical levels. As a result, the semantics of an application domain is kept in the database as opposed to keeping it in the applications accessing the database. We present such a methodology using the MADS conceptual spatio-temporal model. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.