A perspective for research on conceptual modelling

Abstract

This position paper is intended to provide a perspective for research on conceptual modelling carried out over the past five years at the University of Toronto and to draw some conclusions from the experiences we have accumulated. “Conceptual modelling” here refers to the activity of constructing abstract models of knowledge about some world and is synonymous with the terms “knowledge representation” and “semantic data model” as they have been used in AI and Databases respectively. Much of the research on the subject has focused on the development of descriptive tools for the description of such models. Less attention has been paid, so far, on methodologies for building such models.