http://www.dis.uniroma1.it/~degiacomo/didattica/esslli03/

15th European Summer School in Logic Language and Information
18-29 August 2003, Vienna (Austria)

Home page of the Course on
Description Logics for Conceptual Data Modeling in UML

Diego Calvanese    and    Giuseppe De Giacomo

Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica
Università di Roma "La Sapienza"

Description of the course

The course presents an approach to conceptual data modeling based on the use of Description Logics (DLs), which are logics specifically designed to represent classes and relationships among classes. DLs, seen as a specific subclass of First-Order Logic with syntactic restrictions that guarantee desirable computational properties, are introduced. It is demonstrated how standard formalisms used for conceptual data modeling (UML, Entity-Relationship model) can be equipped with a formal semantics and can be effectively captured in DLs. It is discussed how the formalization in terms of DLs provides added value and support to the designer by allowing her to detect relevant formal properties of the design. The computational complexity of various reasoning tasks arising in conceptual modeling and of the associated algorithms is analyzed.

Prerequisites

Course Overview (with slides to download)

Part 1: UML Class Diagrams -- G. De Giacomo (days 1, 2)
Motivation, intro to UML Class Diagrams, UML Class Diagrams and First-Order-Logic, forms of reasoning on UML Class Diagrams [2, 3]

Part 2: Description Logics -- D. Calvanese (days 3, 4)
Intro to Description Logics, reasoning, complexity [1, 2]

Part 3: Complexity of Reasoning on UML Class Diagrams -- D. Calvanese (day 5)
UML Class Diagrams and Description Logics, EXPTIME-hardness of reasoning on UML Class Diagrams, EXPTIME-membership of reasoning on UML Class Diagrams [1, 2]

Demo of i.com -- Special guest E. Franconi (day 5)
A system based on DLs for reasoning on UML Class Diagrams

Course Material

  1. F. Baader and W. Nutt. Basic description logics. In F. Baader, D. Calvanese, D. McGuinness, D. Nardi, and Peter F. Patel-Schneider, editors, The Description Logic Handbook: Theory, Implementation and Applications, chapter 2, pages 43-95. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
  2. D. Berardi, A. Calì, D. Calvanese, and G. De Giacomo. Reasoning on UML class diagrams. Technical Report 11-03, Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica, Università di Roma ``La Sapienza'', 2003.
  3. D. Calvanese, M. Lenzerini, and D. Nardi. Description logics for conceptual data modeling. In J. Chomicki and G. Saake, editors, Logics for Databases and Information Systems, pages 229-264. Kluwer Academic Publisher, 1998.

Additional References