Summary: Deriving Semantic Information through Property
Covering and Inheritance
Anastasia Analyti 1 , Nicolas Spyratos 2 \Lambda , Panos Constantopoulos 1;3
1 Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology­Hellas, Greece
2 Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique, Universite de Paris­Sud, France
3 Department of Computer Science, University of Crete, Greece
E­mail: analyti, panos@ics.forth.gr, spyratos@lri.fr
Abstract
Covering is a well­known relationship in semantic and object­oriented data models. Covering holds
when a class is the union of a collection of subclasses. However, covering has been studied only for
entity classes. In this paper, we investigate covering for properties, as well. We introduce a new
relationship among properties, called property covering. Property covering holds when a property
restricted to a given class is the union of a collection of sub­properties. Property covering allows
us to (i) partition a property into sub­properties, (ii) express property value refinement, and (iii)
express a particular form of negative information. We demonstrate that property covering, together
with inheritance, disjointness, and participation constraints, constitutes a useful conceptual model­
ing mechanism. In particular, we provide a set of inference rules that lead to schema derivations
based on property covering, specialization, and disjointness relations.
Keywords: Property covering, inheritance, disjointness, participation constraints, schema deriva­
tions, conceptual modeling.

Source: Analyti, Anastasia - Institute of Computer Science, Foundation of Research and Technology, Hellas

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences