An assisting method for enterprise-wide conceptual data modeling in the bottom-up approach

Abstract

This paper proposes a method with which an ER model, an important part of Enterprise-wide Conceptual Data Model, can be designed from existing information resources scattered all over the enterprise application systems. The method comprises concept extraction through data element name analysis, semantic network synthesis to express associations among the concepts, the extraction of principal concepts as possible entity types from the semantic network and attribute assignment. An evaluation of the method using data elements from NTT's customer management sector shows its effectiveness. We have implemented part of the algorithm, and it has reduced much of the work load of our ER model designers.