Modeling fuzzy information in UML class diagrams and object-oriented database models

Conceptual data modeling has become essential for non-traditional application areas. Some conceptual data models have been proposed as tools for database design and object-oriented database modeling. Information in real-world applications is often vague or ambiguous. Currently, a little research is underway on modeling the imprecision and uncertainty in conceptual data modeling and the conceptual design of fuzzy databases. The unified modeling language (UML) is a set of object-oriented modeling notations and a standard of the object management group (OMG) with applications to many areas of software engineering and knowledge engineering, increasingly including data modeling. This paper introduces different levels of fuzziness into the class of UML and presents the corresponding graphical representations, with the result that UML class diagrams may model fuzzy information. The fuzzy UML data model is also formally mapped into the fuzzy object-oriented database model. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.