ConceptBase

Overview

ConceptBase is a multi-user deductive object manager mainly intended for conceptual modeling and coordination in design environments. The system implements O-Telos, a dialect of Telos which amalgamates properties of deductive and object-oriented languages. Key features are

• availability on multiple platforms (Windows 2000/XP, Linux i386/x64, Solaris Sun/i386, Mac)
• logical, frame-like, and graphical network views on the object store
• unlimited extensibility by meta class hierarchies
• deductive rules & integrity constraints as attributes of classes
• queries as classes with membership constraints
• complex views as extension of query classes
• user-definable answer formats for queries and views
• active rules with the ability to database updates and external program calls
• persistent object store with access to historical states of the database
• cost-based and semantic query optimization
• meta-level rules and constraints for axiomatic language extension (improved in V7.0)
• efficient active rule processor integrated into integrity checker (improved in V7.0)
• sophisticated graphical editor with user-definable node and link shapes (improved in V7.0)
• programming interface based on declarative ASK and TELL methods

All classes, meta classes, instances, attributes, rules, constraints, and queries are uniformly represented as objects. Any object may be updated at any time in the life cycle of the object base. Even class membership is regarded as an object and is subject to updates.

The semantics of O-Telos -- esp. class membership, attribution, and inheritance -- is firmly based on rock-solid DATALOG, a simple logic which provides an non-ambiguous way of defining which statements are regarded by the system to be true. Any query posed to the system will terminate and produce the correct answer.

The meta-modeling ability allows to represent heterogeneous modeling languages like entity-relationship diagrams, OMT, etc. as O-Telos meta classes whose rules and constraints encode the axioms of the respective language, e.g. generalization. The meta classes can co-exist within the same object base. Objects described in one modeling language can be explicitely linked to objects described in some other modeling language.

ConceptBase follows a client-server architecture. Client programs can connect to the ConceptBase server and exchange data via the interprocess communication of the Internet protocol. The ConceptBase programming interface allows the users to create their own client programs in pure Java, C or Prolog. The Java-based ConceptBase user interface offers a palette of graphical, tabular, and textual tools for editing and browsing the object base (ERD example, Business Process Modeling example). It runs on any computer that provides a Java runtime enviroment. Embedding of the user interface into a Web page is possible as well.

ConceptBase is currently applied at more than 500 sites world-wide (see references) for research as well as teaching. Being freely distributed since 1990 it is the first and still one of the most widely used DOOD (deductive and object-oriented database) systems world-wide. See here for some information on typical applications of ConceptBase.

Publications

2009

• Christoph Quix

  Meta Data Repository

  Published in M. Tamer Özsu, Ling Liu (eds.): Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, 2009.

• Christoph Quix

  Model Management

  Published in M. Tamer Özsu, Ling Liu (eds.): Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, 2009.

• Christoph Quix

  Metadatabase Design for Data Warehouses

  Published in In M.A. Jeusfeld, M. Jarke, J. Mylopoulos (eds.): Metamodeling for Method Engineering, MIT Press 2009, pp. 329-355

• Matthias Jarke, Manfred Jeusfeld, Hans Nissen, Christoph Quix

  Heterogeneity in model management -- a meta modeling approach

  Published in In A. Borgida, V. Chaudhri, P. Giorgini, E. Yu (eds.): Conceptual Modeling -- Foundations and Applications. Springer LNCS 5600, pp. 237-253, 2009.

• Matthias Jarke, Ralf Klamma, K. Lyytinen

  Metamodeling

  Published in In M.A. Jeusfeld, M. Jarke, J. Mylopoulos (eds.): Metamodeling for Method Engineering, MIT Press 2009, pp. 43-88

• Manfred Jeusfeld, Matthias Jarke, J. Mylopoulos, eds.

  Metamodeling for Method Engineering

  Published in MIT Press 2009, ISBN 978-0-262-10108-0

2005

• Manfred Jeusfeld, Christoph Quix

  Meta-Modelling with ConceptBase

  Published in Workshop on Meta-Modelling and Corresponding Tools, Essen, Germany, 2005

2000

• P. A. Bernstein, L. Haas, Matthias Jarke, E. Rahm, G. Wiederhold

  Panel: Is generic metadata management feasible?

  Published in Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB 2000), 10.-13.9. 2000 Cairo,Egypt. Morgan Kaufmann Publ., 2000, pp. 660-662.

1999

• Manfred Jeusfeld, Matthias Jarke, Martin Staudt, Christoph Quix, Thomas List

  Application Experience with a Repository System for Information Systems Development

  Published in R. Kasckek (ed.): Proceedings Entwicklungsmethoden für Informationssysteme und deren Anwendung (EMISA'99). Reihe Wirtschaftsinformatik, Teubner Verlag, Stuttgart, Germany, pp. 147-174, 1999

• Christoph Quix

  Repository Support for Data Warehouse Evolution

  Published in Proceedings of the International Workshop on Design and Management of Data Warehouses (DMDW '99), Heidelberg, Germany, 1999

• Martin Staudt, René Soiron, Christoph Quix, Matthias Jarke

  Optimizing Queries for Repository-Based Applications

  Published in ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, San Antonio, Texas, USA, 1999

• Martin Staudt, René Soiron, Christoph Quix, Matthias Jarke

  Cost-Based Query Optimization for Metadata Repositories

  Published in Applied Computing Review (Publication of ACM SIGAPP), Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 10-21, Summer 1999

• Matthias Jarke, Manfred Jeusfeld, Christoph Quix, P. Vassiliadis

  Architecture and Quality for Data Warehouses: An Extended Repository Approach

  Published in Information Systems, 24(3), pp. 229-253, 1999

1998

• Martin Staudt, Christoph Quix, Manfred Jeusfeld

  View Maintenance and Change Notification for Application Program Views

  Published in ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 1998

• Manfred Jeusfeld, Christoph Quix, Matthias Jarke

  Design and Analysis of Quality Information for Data Warehouses

  Published in 17th International Conference on the Entity Relationship Approach (ER'98), Singapore, 1998

• Manfred Jeusfeld, Matthias Jarke, Hans Nissen, Martin Staudt

  ConceptBase: Managing conceptual models about information systems

  Published in P.Bernus, K.Mertins, G.Schmidt (eds.), Handbook of InformationSystems, Springer-Verlag, pp. 265-285, 1998

• Matthias Jarke, Manfred Jeusfeld, Christoph Quix, P. Vassiliadis

  Architecture and Quality in Data Warehouses

  Published in 10th Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering(CAiSE '98), Pisa, Italy, 1998

• Michael Gebhardt, Matthias Jarke, Manfred Jeusfeld, Christoph Quix, Stefan Sklorz

  Tools for Data Warehouse Quality

  Published in Proc. of the 10th International Conference on Scientific and Statistical Database Management (SSDBM'98), Capri, Italy, July 1998. IEEE Computer Society Press, pp. 229-232

1997

• Christoph Quix, Martin Staudt

  Database Change Propagation for a Medical Application Scenario

  Published in Proc. of the 5th European Congress on Intelligent Techniques and SoftComputing (EUFIT'97), Volume 2, Aachen, Germany, September 1997, pp. 1167-1170

1996

• Martin Staudt, K. v. Thadden

  A generic subsumption testing toolkit for knowledge base queries

  Published in Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications (DEXA 96), Zürich, Switzerland, September 1996, pp. 834-844

• Martin Staudt, Matthias Jarke, Christoph Quix

  Change notification for externally materialized application program views

  Published in Proceedings of the 8th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI'96), Toulouse, France 1996, pp. 96-99

• Martin Staudt, Matthias Jarke

  Incremental maintenance of externally materialized views

  Published in Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB'96), Bombay, India 1996, pp. 75-86

• Matthias Jarke, Manfred Jeusfeld, Martin Staudt

  ConceptBase V4.1 User Manual

  Published in Technischer Bericht, RWTH Aachen, August 1996