Abstract
Data modeling is a crucial step towards incorporating successful databases in an organization. The design, operational behavior, and use of a database are affected by the meaning of the information it manages. The cognitive capability of the human mind is rather complex; it has the capability to visualize a problem domain in a variety of perspectives. It would be interesting to conceive of an application, by which the best thoughts of human minds can be pooled together to create a conceptual schema design for a database. Thus, the database design would be enhanced if capabilities were provided for collaboration between different designers working on different platforms at different locations and even at different times but working on the same database design. This paper describes an agent- based approach, using an agent-based architecture communicating through the Internet, which promotes the collaborative conceptual schema design. The agent communication was to be developed using KQML (Knowledge Query Manipulation Language) in Java. The prototype of the system developed captures only the static properties of a system. The dynamic aspects of the operations are resolved by considering certain additional aspects that are not exactly database objects, but are associated with a database occurrence which changes as a result of an operation. These are implementation issues that must be taken care by a database designer during the implementation.
Recommended Citation
Khoo, Benjamin and Chandramouli, Sriram, "An Agent-Based Approach For Collaborative Schema Design" (1999). AMCIS 1999 Proceedings. 19.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis1999/19