Category-Theoretic Co-Products, Schema Discrepancies and Role
Abstractions in Information Systems
Robert M. Colomb
Department of Computer Science
The University of Queensland
Queensland 4072 Australia
colomb@cs.uq.edu.au
Abstract
This paper presents a category theoretic solution to the schema
discrepancy problem. It shows that the problem of relating the involved
party/ role abstraction used in enterprise modelling with the concrete
entities and relationships employed in conceptual modelling for an
enterprise's information system is an instance of the schema discrepancy
problem. The solution to the schema discrepancy problem, based on the
category theoretic notion of co-product, therefore permits this sort of
enterprise model to function as a formal abstraction of the conceptual
model. This abstraction mechanism is shown to integrate smoothly with
another abstraction mechanism based on the category theoretic notion of
fibration, giving a promising method of establishing a general formal
relationship between abstract enterprise models and the concrete
information systems which implement them.
Conference Home Page