COMPUTER SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY: DATA ABSTRACTION, DATABASES, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE, Philip M. Klutznick, Secretary Jordan J. Baruch, Assistant Secretary for Productivity, Technology, and Innovation NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS, Ernest Ambler, Director Issued May 1980 Reports on Computer Science and Technology The National Bureau of Standards has a special responsibility within the Federal Government for computer science and technology activities. The programs of the NBS Institute for Computer Sciences and Technology are designed to provide ADP standards, guidelines, and technical advisory services to improve the effectiveness of computer utilization in the Federal sector, and to perform appropriate research and development efforts as foundation for such activities and programs. This publication series will report these NBS efforts to the Federal computer community as well as to interested specialists in the academic and private sectors. Those wishing to receive notices of publications in this series should complete and return the form at the end of this publication. National Bureau of Standards Special Publication 500-59 Nat. Bur. Stand. (U.S.), Spec. Publ. 500-59, 86 pages (May 1980) Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 80-600052 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON: 1980 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402 Price $3.75 (Add 25 percent additional for other than U.S. mailing) PREFACE Abstraction, one of the most common and most important intellectual activities, enables people to model and deal with the world around them. This observation is basic to modelling parts of the "real world" in computers. In light of this the topic of abstraction and its representation has been actively and fruitfully investigated by researchers in computer and information sciences. In particular, the three fields of artificial intelligence, databases, and programming languages have addressed overlapping issues within the area of conceptual models for dynamic systems of complex data. For example, in artificial intelligence there is knowledge representation, in databases there are semantic database models, and in programming languages there is data abstraction. Each group has made important contributions and has discovered problems in applying the work of other groups to their area. All groups are addressing aspects of the following open problems: This bibliography is intended to be a comprehensive reference to work on conceptual modelling of dynamic systems of complex data. A second objective is to encourage the cross-fertilization of the three research areas. Although each area has its own, unique concerns, there are important concepts, goals, and problems common to all three areas. The bibliography emphasizes one of these concepts, data abstraction. It is hoped that this bibliography will encourage an exchange of information on the technologies being used o specify and represent conceptual models in each of the areas and on problems that are still to be solved. The bibliogaphy contains entries for books, articles, and papers from the areas of programming anguages, database management, artificial intelligence, and software engineering. Entries reference works hat present: terminology, basic concepts, and open research problems in each area; - approaches, in each area, to data modelling: concepts, tools, techniques, and open problems; - the integration of approaches from two or more areas to data and its treatment through programming languages. There is some emphasis on specification, representation, and verification issues that arise in the design, development, and maintenance of database applications. The bibliography consists of three sections. The first is a list of the topic areas covered by referenced works. The second is an index, by topic, to the bibliographic entries. Entries are indexed by the first author's last name followed by the year and, possibly, a qualifying letter, e.g., Paolini79a. A citation of the form "In XXX" means that the work was published in a volume also included in the bibliography with index XXX, e.g., In Utah76. The third section contains the bibliographic entries. Some entries are annotated and some include the author's abstracts. DATA ABSTRACTION, DATABASES, AND CONCEPTUAL MODELLING: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY MICHAEL L. BRODIE ABSTRACT This bibliography contains entries for over 350 books, articles, and papers on issues within the area of conceptual modelling of dynamic systems of complex data. The entries have been drawn from recent work in the areas of database management, programming languages, artificial intelligence, and software engineering. The bibliography has two puposes: to present a comprehensive list of annotated references to research into issues of data abstraction, databases, and conceptual modelling; and second, to encourage the cross-fertilization of the three research areas of database management, programming languages, and artificial intelligence. Key words: Abstract data types; artificial intelligence; data abstraction; database management systems; data structures; programming languages; software engineering. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author is grateful for contributions and comments from Robert Balzer, Janis Bubenko Jr., ohn Gannon, and Lawrence Rowe. Special thanks are due to John Mylopoulos who compiled most of the Al references and to Nancy Sevitski for her assistance in text editing. The author is also grateful to Donald R. Deutsch, Dennis Fife, and Edgar H. Sibley for their upport in pursuing this research. This work was supported, in part, by the National Bureau of Standards under contract number BS79SBCA0216 and by the National Science Foundation under grant number MCS 77-22509. The Computer Science Center of the University of Maryland supported, in part, the production of this document. |