Abstract
Reifying a relationship consists in viewing it as an entity. The word “reification” comes from the Latin word res, which means “thing”. Reification has a well-known equivalent in natural language, nominalization, which basically consists in turning a verb into a noun. Reification is widely used in conceptual modeling; conceptual modelers must therefore have a good grasp of it. In Sect. 6.1, we define reification and explain its logical basis. Reification can easily be defined in UML, as we show in Sect. 6.2. In some languages, however, reification cannot be defined as easily, so one must instead use implicit reification, which is also described in Sect. 6.2. Implicit reification is an interesting schema transformation that can be used in other contexts.
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(2007). Reification. In: Conceptual Modeling of Information Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-39390-0_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-39390-0_6
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