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Design of a Compiler for a Semantic Data Model

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Foundations of Knowledge Base Management

Part of the book series: Topics in Information Systems ((TINF))

Abstract

The features of a compiler for a Taxis design language are described and discussed. Taxis offers an entity-based framework for designing interactive information systems and a data model which supports generalization, classification and aggregation as abstraction mechanisms. Its features include multiple inheritance of attributes, isA hierarchies of transactions, metaclasses, typed attributes, a procedural exception-handling mechanism, an iteration construct based on the abstraction mechanisms supported, semantic integrity constraints, including time-dependent ones, and communicating Petri net-like processes (called scripts). Designing and implementing a compiler for the language requires tackling the problem of efficiently representing and accessing a large collection of entities, performing (static) type checking and representing is A hierarchies of transactions. The compiler has also been designed to deal with semantic integrity constraints and scripts, although these features have not yet been implemented.

This chapter is an extension and revision of a paper [NCLB87b] published by the Association for Computing Machinery in the ACM SIGMOD ’87 Proceedings, May 27–29, 1987, San Francisco, CA, USA, and of a University of Toronto Technical Report [NCLB87a].

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, M5S 1A4, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Brian A. Nixon, K. Lawrence Chung, John Mylopoulos (Senior Fellow) & Martin Stanley

  2. Department of Computer Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, 08903, USA

    David Lauzon & Alex Borgida

  3. Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Canada

    John Mylopoulos (Senior Fellow)

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  1. Brian A. Nixon
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  2. K. Lawrence Chung
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  3. David Lauzon
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  4. Alex Borgida
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  5. John Mylopoulos
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  6. Martin Stanley
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Fachbereich Informatik, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Robert-Mayer-Straße 11-15, D-6000, Frankfurt a. M. 11, Rep. Fed. of Germany

    Joachim W. Schmidt

  2. Istituto di Elaborazione della Informazione, Consiglia Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Robert-Mayer-Strape 11-15, I-56100, Pisa, Italy

    Constantino Thanos

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Nixon, B.A., Chung, K.L., Lauzon, D., Borgida, A., Mylopoulos, J., Stanley, M. (1989). Design of a Compiler for a Semantic Data Model. In: Schmidt, J.W., Thanos, C. (eds) Foundations of Knowledge Base Management. Topics in Information Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-83397-7_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-83397-7_14

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