What is it about?
Data modelling is around since the 1970s. This paper introduces several novelties to enhance and improve data modelling through an approach called Fragmenta, which enables a model to be split vertically, along the abstraction axis, and horizontally, along the fragmentation or decomposition axis. Fragmenta expresses data modelling constraints graphically as part of the data modelling to diminish the need for separate textual representation (e.g. a UML class diagram with its textual OCL constraints).
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Why is it important?
Fragmenta shows that it is possible to build an integrated data modelling framework with support for vertical and horizontal decomposition, and graphical constraints. It is the first approach that does so with a mathematical underpinning and a supporting proof-of-concept tool.
Perspectives
I hope readers find this article interesting because it is about data modelling, a popular modelling medium used widely in the software industry, and they feel like actually modelling using the paper's novelties, namely, proxies, abstraction through vertical refinement, virtuals, and the several means to express graphical constraints.
Nuno Amalio
Nottingham Trent University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Enhancing Expressivity, Modularity and Rigour of Graphical Data Modelling with Fragmenta, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, September 2025, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3765738.
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