Conceptual model (computer science)

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A conceptual model captures ideas in a problem domain. The conceptual model is explicitly chosen to be independent of implementation details, such as concurrency or data storage. It is the result of object-oriented analysis for an object orientated based development. For projects such as Data Warehousing, or those that use traditional Entity Relationship Modelling the focus is identifying requirements concepts that lead to the identification of business entities

The aim of conceptual model is to express the meaning of terms and concepts used by domain experts to discuss the problem, and to find the correct relationships between different concepts. The conceptual model attempts to clarify the meaning of various usually ambiguous terms, and ensure that problems with different interpretations of the terms and concepts cannot occur. Such differing interpretations could easily cause the software projects that are based on the interpretation of the concepts to fail. Once the domain concepts have been modelled, the model becomes a stable basis for subsequent development of applications in the domain. The concepts of the conceptual model can be used as basis of object-oriented design and implemented in program code, in particular as classes in object-oriented languages. The realization of conceptual models of many domains can be combined to a coherent platform.

A conceptual model can be described using various notations, such as UML or OMT for object modelling, or IE or IDEF1X for Entity Relationship Modelling. In UML notation, the conceptual model is often described with a class diagram in which classes represent concepts, associations represent relationships between concepts and role types of an association represent role types taken by instances of the modelled concepts in various situations. In ER notation, the conceptual model is described with an ER Diagram in which entities represent concepts, cardinality and optionality represent relationships between concepts.

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