Principles of the Concept-Oriented Data Model

In the paper a new approach to data representation and manipulation is described, which is called the concept-oriented data model (CODM). It is supposed that items represent data units, which are stored in concepts. A concept is a combination of superconcepts, which determine the concept's dimensionality or properties. An item is a combination of superitems taken by one from all the superconcepts. An item stores a combination of references to its superitems. The references implement inclusion relation or attribute-value relation among items. A concept-oriented database is defined by its concept structure called syntax or schema and its item structure called semantics. The model defines formal transformations of syntax and semantics including the canonical semantics where all concepts are merged and the data semantics is represented by one set of items. The concept-oriented data model treats relations as subconcepts where items are instances of the relations. Multi-valued attributes are defined via subconcepts as a view on the database semantics rather than as a built-in mechanism. The model includes concept-oriented query language, which is based on collection manipulations. It also has such mechanisms as aggregation and inference based on semantics propagation through the database schema.