An Object-oriented Semantic Association Model, AI in Industrial Engineering and Manufacturing: Theoretical Issues and Applications(OSAM*)

Published

January 1, 1988

Author(s)

Stanley Su, V Krishnamurthy, H Lam

Abstract

This paper presents an object-oriented semantic association model OSAM*, which possesses the concepts and features of the object-oriented paradigm. In addition to the concepts of object classes, objects, instance variables, methods, message passing, and inheritance found in existing object-oriented environments like SMALLTALK and OPAL, OSAM* allows a rule-based knowledge component to be integrated with objects and object classes. The expressive power of OSAM* lies in its capability to use various semantic association types and data constructors in a nested and/or recursive fashion to represent very complex objects and semantic relationships among objects found in many areas of applications such as CAD/CAM. The distinctions made by the various association types in this model allow the user of a knowledge base management system (KBMS) or a database management system (DBMS) to express explicitly the structural properties, operational characteristics and knowledge rules associated with the data. They also allow the KBMS or DBMS to operate more intelligently by using the semantic properties made known to the system. A semantically rich data model can greatly simplify the query language and, thus the user''s tasks in manipulating a knowledge base, because the user''s queries need not repeat the semantics already captured by the semantic model. In this paper, the association types of OSAM* are formally defined and illustrated using examples from CAD/CAM.

Citation

American Institute of Engineers

Pub Type

Journals

Citation

Su, S. , Krishnamurthy, V. and Lam, H. (1988), An Object-oriented Semantic Association Model, AI in Industrial Engineering and Manufacturing: Theoretical Issues and Applications(OSAM*), American Institute of Engineers (Accessed April 16, 2024)