Abstract
The quality of the results produced in the early phases of systems development is a major factor in determining the overall quality of an information system. Therefore, an important task for research in conceptual modelling and requirements engineering is to clarify the concept of quality and develop methods for improving the quality of conceptual schemas. In this paper, we propose an approach for improving schema quality, which is based on a systematic use of schema transformations to incrementally restructure schemas. We introduce a number of schema transformations as well as a set of quality criteria for conceptual schemas, and we show how the transformations affect these quality criteria.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
C. Batini and G. D. Battista,“A Methodology for Conceptual Documentation and Maintenance”, Information Systems, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 297–318, 1988.
P. P. Chen,“The Entity-Relationship Model — Toward a Unified View of Data”, ACM ToDS, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 9–36, 1976.
A. Davis, Software Requirements: Analysis and Specification, Prentice Hall, 1990.
C. Eick,“A Methodology for the Design and Transformation of Conceptual Schemas”, in 17th Conference on VLDB, pp. 25–34, 1991.
R. ElMasri, J. Weeldryer and A. Hevner,“The Category Concept: An Extension to the Entity-Relationship Model”, Data and Knowledge Engineering, vol. 1, no. 1, 1985.
R. Fagin,“Normal Forms and Relational Database Operators”, in ACM SIGMOD, pp. 153–160, 1979.
J.-L. Hainaut, “Entity Generating Schema Transformations”, in 10th International Conference on Entity-Relationship Approach, San Francisco, 1991.
S. Hakkarainen and M. Bergholtz, “VINCI — a Tool for Schema Integration”, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, 1995.
T. Halpin, “A Fact-oriented Approach to Schema Transformations”, in Mathematical Foundations of Database Systems, Springer, 1990.
R. Hull, “Relative Information Capacity of Simple Relational Database Schemata”, SIAM Journal of Computing, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 856–886, 1986.
P. Johannesson, “Schema Standardization as an Aid in View Integration”, Information Systems, vol. 19, no. 3, 1994.
I. Kobayashi, “Losslessness and Semantic Correctness of Database Schema Transformations”, Information Systems, vol. 11, no. 1, 1986.
O. Lindland, G. Sindre, et al. “Understanding Quality in Conceptual Modeling.” IEEE Software, March: pp. 29–42, 1994.
R. Miller, Y. Ioannidis and R. Ramakrishnan, “Schema Equivalence in Heterogeneous Systems: Bridging Theory and Practice”, Information Systems, vol. 19, no. 1, 1994.
A. Olivé, “On the Design and Implementation of Information Systems from Deductive Conceptual Models”, in VLDB89, Amsterdam, 1989.
A. P. Sheth and J. A. Larson, “Federated Database Systems for Managing Distributed, Heterogeneous, and Autonomous Databases”, ACM Computing Surveys, vol. 22, no. 3,1990.
O. D. Troyer, “On Data Schema Transformations”, PhD, Katholieke Universiteit Brabant, 1993.
J. Ullman, Principles of Database and Knowledge-base Systems, Computer Press, 1988.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1996 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Assenova, P., Johannesson, P. (1996). Improving quality in conceptual modelling by the use of schema transformations. In: Thalheim, B. (eds) Conceptual Modeling — ER '96. ER 1996. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1157. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0019929
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0019929
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-61784-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-70685-4
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive