Abstract

Hirschheim et al. (1995) argue that information system designers' choice of a particular data modeling approach is inextricably linked to ontological, epistemological, social-contextual, and representational assumptions that they make about the worlds they seek to represent via their models. I argue, instead, that the link between different data modeling approaches and these four sets of assumptions is either weak or non-existent. I agree that there is some type of association between use of a particular data modeling approach and the ontological assumptions that designers make. The nature of the links, however, between different data modeling approaches and different epistemological, social-contextual, and representational assumptions is more problematical.

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