Fuzzy Information Modeling with the UML

Abstract

Computer applications in nontraditional areas have put requirements on conceptual data modeling. Some conceptual data models, being the tool of design databases, were proposed. However, information in real-world applications is often vague or ambiguous. Currently, less research has been done in modeling imprecision and uncertainty in conceptual data models. The UML (Unified Modeling Language) is a set of object-oriented modeling notations and is a standard of the Object Data Management Group (ODMG). It can be applied in many areas of software engineering and knowledge engineering. Increasingly, the UML is being applied to data modeling. In this chapter, different levels of fuzziness are introduced into the class of the UML and the corresponding graphical representations are given. The class diagrams of the UML can hereby model fuzzy information.