Abstract
The notion of context appears in several disciplines, including computer science, under various forms. In this paper, we are concerned with a notion of context in the area of conceptual modeling. First, we present a simple definition whereby a context is seen as a set of objects, within which each object has a set of names and possibly a reference: the reference of the object is another context which “hides” detailed information about the object. Then, we enhance our simple notion of context by structuring its contents through the traditional abstraction mechanisms, i.e. classification, generalization, and attribution.We show that, depending on the application, our notion of context can be used either as an alternative way of modeling or as a complement of the traditional abstraction mechanisms. Finally, we study the interactions between contextualization and the traditional abstraction mechanisms as well as the constraints that govern such interactions.
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Theodorakis, M., Analyti, A., Constantopoulos, P., Spyratos, N. (1999). Contextualization as an Abstraction Mechanism for Conceptual Modelling. In: Akoka, J., Bouzeghoub, M., Comyn-Wattiau, I., Métais, E. (eds) Conceptual Modeling — ER ’99. ER 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1728. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-47866-3_32
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-47866-3_32
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