Conceptual classes and system classes in object databases

Abstract.

In this paper, formal relationships between classes of objects based on semantic data models (i.e. conceptual classes) and classes of objects based on object models (i.e system classes), are established. The proposed method starts from conceptual classes and generates system classes. This method can be employed to implement semantic data models on top of currently available object oriented database systems. As a consequence, the database applications can be specified with the flexibility of a conceptual schema while the obtained implementation exploits the efficiency of an object-oriented database system. Both the correctness and the completeness of our method are demonstrated and a discussion on its complexity is provided.