DEDUCTIVE ENTITY-RELATIONSHIP MODELING

We present an entity relationship oriented model, which essentially in cludes the notion of class, together with different types of assertion s on classes. The assertions are used to model IS-A and disjointness r elations both between entities and between relationships, part-of rela tions between entities and relationships, mandatory participation of a n entity in a relationship, and interdependencies between the projecti ons of relationships. We define the semantics of the model in terms of first-order logic, and present a sound and complete inference algorit hm for such a model. The algorithm is shown to have polynomial time co mplexity in the case where interdependencies on the projections of rel ationships are not taken into account. We argue that our model and the associated inference capabilities provide a suitable formal basis for designing an effective environment supporting conceptual modeling.