Evaluating Conceptual Modeling Languages

An important assumption for many KA researchers is structure preservation ; i.e. conceptual models can be converted in a straight forward manner into a design for an implementation. This assumption may not always hold. Seemingly trivial variants in a qualitative conceptual models can block pragmatically desirable properties such as KB-testability and KB-maintainability. KB-testability and KB-maintainability are an important property: we must not build knowledge bases that are untestable or un-maintainable. Hence, we argue against using these features within conceptual models. The tools used for identifying these features (instance generators , graph theory, studying KB-testability and KB-maintainability) are quite general and could be used to nd restrictions to other conceptual modeling languages.