A step toward foundation of class diagram algebra for enterprise service systems

Abstract

An enterprise service system is large and complex and manages big and complicated data. A large set of partial data models are used during designing an information system for a large enterprise because each service application consisting of an enterprise service system uses only a part of big and complicated data in most cases. The skill of modelers makes fluctuation and discrepancy among data models. It is necessary how to keep consistency among data models. There are several diagram methods to support data modeling. The Unified Modeling Language is a popular standard modeling language. A class diagram is describing a static view of data model. There are two kinds of inconsistency among data models described in class diagrams. One is inconsistency within a data model described in a class diagram. The other is inconsistency depending on operations for class diagrams. We present syntax of a class diagram describing a data model for syntactical foundation for class diagram algebra. Then we introduce syntactical merger, remain, complement and intersection operations on class diagrams. Consolidation and restoration conditions keep consistency of class diagrams syntactically during results of those operations.