Semantic Modeling for Data

Glossary

Abductive reasoning

Tries to infer the premises that led to a conclusion by reverse-engineering known deduction rules.

Accuracy

The degree to which the semantic assertions of a model are accepted to be true.

Ambiguity

The situation in which a piece of information can be interpreted in more than one plausible way.

Class

Abstract entity that represents a kind of thing in the world and may serve as the semantic type of other entities.

Class dependence

A class C1 is dependent on a class C2 if for every instance of C1 an instance of C2 must exist.

Class subsumption

Meaning inclusion applied to classes.

Closed-world assumption

If for a given statement we don’t know whether it’s true or not in our model, then we can infer that it’s false.

Completeness

The degree to which elements that should be contained in the model are indeed there.

Conciseness

The degree to which a model does not contain redundant elements.

Consistency

The degree to which the model is free of logical or semantic contradictions.

Contextualization

The explicit representation of all the contexts in which a model’s statements are considered true.

Deductive reasoning

Reasoning from one or more statements (premises) to reach a logically certain conclusion.

Design pattern

Reusable, well-proven solution to recurring modeling/design problems or scenarios.

Entity

Something that may exist concretely or abstractly, outside, or within one’s mind.

Entity attribute

A characteristic of an entity ...