SAM: a semantic association model for corporate and scientific/statistical databases

Technical Report · Wed Dec 01 04:00:00 EST 1982

OSTI ID:6553599

Su, S Y.W.

This paper describes a semantic association model called SAM which is designed for modeling not only scientific/statistical databases but also business oriented databases. The model uses concepts and associations of these concepts to model the real world information of a database management environment. Seven general association types are defined and distinguished based on their structural properties, operational characteristics and semantic constraints. They are the basic constructs for an explicit and direct modeling of complex semantic relationships in databases. The model is characterized by (1) its expressive power offered by the seven modeling constructs and the recursive use and nested structuring of these constructs, (2) its recognition of complex data types such as text, ordered set, matrix, time series, vector, set and time as primitive data types which can be directly manipulated by the user using a DML, (3) its support of principle of relativism by allowing concepts to be multiply labeled to explicitly specify the conflicting views of these concepts, and (4) the distinction it makes on attributes which characterize objects and attributes which statistically summarize a set of objects, and its support of statistical operations. A network structure and a tabular structure called generalized-relation or G-relation are proposed for representing the conceptual and implementation designs of databases respectively. A number of restructuring operations and algebraic operations are also defined for processing G-relations.

• Research Organization: Florida Univ., Gainesville (USA). Database Systems Research and Development Center
• DOE Contract Number: AS05-81ER10977
• OSTI ID: 6553599
• Report Number(s): DOE/ER/10977-T3; ON: DE83006510
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
990200* -- Mathematics & Computers
DATA BASE MANAGEMENT
DESIGN
MANAGEMENT
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MATHEMATICS
PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
STATISTICAL MODELS
STATISTICS