CFP for WS on Logics and reasoning for conceptual models (LRCM’13)

From the ‘advertising department’ of promoting events I co-organise: here’s the Call for Papers for the LRCM’13 workshop.

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First Workshop on Logics and Reasoning for Conceptual Models (LRCM 2013)
14th of December 2013, Stellenbosch, South Africa
http://www.cair.za.net/LRCM2013/
co-located with the 19th International Conference on Logic for Programming,
Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning (LPAR-19), Stellenbosch, South Africa
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There is an increase in complexity of information systems due to, among others, company mergers with information system integration, upscaling of scientific collaborations, e-government etc., which push the necessity for good quality information systems. An information system’s quality is largely determined in the conceptual modeling stage, and avoiding or fixing errors of the conceptual model saves resources during design, implementation, and maintenance. The size and high expressivity of conceptual models represented in languages such as EER, UML, and ORM require a logic-based approach in the representation of information and adoption of automated reasoning techniques to assist in the development of good quality conceptual models. The theory to achieve this is still in its infancy, however, with only a limited set of theories and tools that address subtopics in this area. This workshop aims at bringing together researchers working on the logic foundations of conceptual data modeling languages and the reasoning techniques that are being developed so as to discuss the latest results in the area.

**** Topics ****

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
– Logics for temporal and spatial conceptual models and BPM
– Deontic logics for SBVR
– Other logic-based extensions to standard conceptual modeling languages
– Unifying formalisms for conceptual schemas
– Decidable reasoning over conceptual models
– Dealing with finite and infinite satisfiability of a conceptual model
– Reasoning over UML state and behaviour diagrams
– Reasoning techniques for EER/UML/ORM
– Interaction between ontology languages and conceptual data modeling languages
– Tools for logic-based modeling and reasoning over conceptual models
– Experience reports on logic-based modelling and reasoning over conceptual models

To this end, we solicit mainly theoretical contributions with regular talks and implementation/system demonstrations and some modeling experience reports to facilitate cross-fertilization between theory and praxis. Selection of presentations is based on peer-review of submitted papers by at least 2 reviewers, with a separation between theory and implementation & experience-type of papers.

**** Submissions ****

We welcome submissions in LNCS style in the following two formats for oral presentation:
– Extended abstracts of maximum 2 pages;
– Research papers of maximum 10 pages.
Both can be submitted in pdf format via the EasyChair website at https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=lrcm13

**** Important dates ****

Submission of papers/abstracts: 14 October 2013
Notification of acceptance:     14 November 2013
Camera-ready copies:            2 December 2013
Workshop:                       14 December 2013

**** Organisation ****

Maria Keet, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, keet@ukzn.ac.za
Diego Calvanese, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy, calvanese@inf.unibz.it
Szymon Klarman, CAIR, UKZN / CSIR-Meraka Institute, South Africa, szymon.klarman@gmail.com
Arina Britz, CAIR, UKZN / CSIR-Meraka Institute, South Africa, abritz@csir.co.za

**** Programme Committee ****

Diego Calvanese, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
Szymon Klarman, CAIR, UKZN / CSIR-Meraka Institute, South Africa
Maria Keet, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Marco Montali, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
Mira Balaban, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Meghyn Bienvenu, CNRS and Universite Paris-Sud, France
Terry Halpin, INTI International University, Malaysia
Anna Queralt, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Spain
Vladislav Ryzhikov, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
Till Mossakowski, University of Bremen, Germany
Alessandro Artale, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
Giovanni Casini, CAIR, UKZN / CSIR-Meraka Institute, South Africa
Pablo Fillottrani, Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina
Chiara Ghidini, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy
Roman Kontchakov, Birkbeck, University of London, United Kingdom
Oliver Kutz, University of Bremen, Germany
Tommie Meyer, CAIR, UKZN / CSIR-Meraka Institute, South Africa
David Toman, University of Waterloo, Canada

Towards a metamodel for conceptual data modeling languages

There are several conceptual data modelling languages one can use to develop a conceptual data model that should capture the subject domain of the application area in an implementation-independent way. Complex software development may need to leverage the strengths of each language yet have the need for interoperability between the software components; e.g., an application layer object-oriented software design in a UML Class diagram that needs to be able to talk to the EER diagram for a relational database. Or one is at a state where there are already several conceptual data models for different applications, but they need to be integrated (or at least made compatible). For various reasons, each of these models may well be represented in a different language, such as in UML, EER, ORM, MADS, Telos etc. Superficially, these languages all seem quite similar, even though they are known to be distinct in ‘a few’ features, such as that UML Class Diagrams typically have methods, but EER does not.

To adequately deal with such scenarios, we need not a comparison of language features, but a unification to foster interoperability. However, no unifying framework exists that respects all of their language features. In addition, one may wonder about questions such as: where are the real commonalities ontologically, what is fundamentally different, and what is the same in underlying idea or meaning but only looks different on the surface? We—Pablo Fillottrani (with the Universidad Nacional Del Sur in Argentina) and I—aim to fill this gap.

As a first step, we designed a common, ontology-driven, metamodel[1] of the static, structural, components of ER, EER, UML v2.4.1, ORM, and ORM2, in such a way that each language is strictly a fragment of the encompassing metamodel. In the meantime, we also have developed the metamodel for the constraints, but for now, the results of the metamodel for the static, structural, components have been accepted at the 32nd International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER’13) [1] and 3rd International Conference on Model & Data Engineering (MEDI’13) [2]. There is no repetition among the papers; it merely has been split up into two papers because of page limitations of conference proceedings and the amount of results we had.

The ER’13 paper [1] presents an overview on the core entities and constraints, and an analysis on roles and relationships, their interaction with predicates, and attributes and value types (which we refine with the notion of dimensional attribute). The MEDI’13 paper [2] focuses more on all the structural components, and covers a discussion on classes/concepts, subsumption, aggregation, and nested entity types.

(Warning: spoiler alert…) Perhaps surprisingly, the intersection of all the features in the selected languages is rather small: role, relationship (including subsumption), and object type. The attributions—attributes, value types—are represented differently, but they aim to represent the same underlying idea of attributive properties, and several implicit aspects, such as dimensional attribute and its reusability and relationship versus predicate, have been made explicit. Regarding constraints, only disjointness, completeness, mandatory, object cardinality, and the subset constraint appear in the three language families. The two overview figures in the paper have the classes colour-coded to give an easier overview on how many of the elements are shared across languages, and the appendix contains a table/list of terminology across UML, EER and ORM2, like that UML’s “association” and EER’s “relationship” denote the same kind of thing.

This also received attention in the UKZN e-news letter here, which combined the announcement of the ER’13 paper with my participation in the Dagstuhl seminar on Reasoning over Conceptual Schemas last May, the DST/NRF funded South Africa – Argentina bi-lateral project on the unification of conceptual modelling languages, and Pablo’s visit to UKZN the previous two weeks.

References

[1] Keet, C.M., Fillottrani, P.R. Toward an ontology-driven unifying metamodel for UML Class Diagrams, EER, and ORM2. 32nd International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER’13). 11-13 November, 2013, Hong Kong. Springer LNCS (in print).

[2] Keet, C.M., Fillottrani, P.R. Structural entities of an ontology-driven unifying metamodel for UML, EER, and ORM2. 3rd International Conference on Model & Data Engineering (MEDI’13). September 25-27, 2013, Amantea, Calabria, Italy. Springer LNCS (in print).

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[1] the term “metamodel” is used here in the common usage of the term in the literature, but, more precisely, we have a conceptual model that represents the entities and the constraints on their usage in a conceptual data model; e.g., it states that each relationship (association) is composed of at least two roles (association ends), that a nested entity type objectifies one relationship, that a multi-valued attribute is an attribute, and so on.