Treffer: Geographic Data Modelling in TM

Current object-oriented systems offer among others integration of data and methods that are formulated mostly in a third generation programming language; moreover inheritance of data and methods is typically based on an operational semantics. The object-oriented data model TM, however, contains rich data structuring capabilities, a high-level specification of methods and constraints, and inheritance for data, methods and constraints. Moreover TM has a formal semantics. In this paper it is shown that TM can be used to specify complex application environments. Especially in environments with confusing concepts TM can be of great help to give brief and unambiguous specifications. As an example a geographic database application is taken: the needed classes with data, methods and constraints are specified. It is shown that the TM extensions to current object-oriented data models are welcome new modelling tools. keywords: geographic data modelling, object-oriented data models, formal semant.