This blog post serves as a follow-up to our previous article, “Understanding Data Models,” where we delved into the analysis and explanation of Data Models. In this blog post, we’ll illustrate the operation of Data Model Representation.

To support the representation of several Data Models in a single space, this space needs to support a generic enough representation that allows for expressing all the semantic concepts of each Data Model and puts them on a common base that supports the comparison of semantic meanings. Therefore, it was implemented as four concepts in a hierarchical model in the web framework to support the representation of the different Data Models:

Data Model: This concept represents the root to each Data Model. It identifies the name of the Data Model and a description. This concept allows it to be associated with multiple child Data Models to support the representation of the several levels of data models (some data models may be divided in multiple Data Models to simplify the internal organisation). A Data Model can also be linked to multiple Data Concepts.

A Data Model is described with the following interface, as depicted in the figure below:

Data Concept: A Data Concept corresponds to an application domain for an aggregation of data, where the different data measurements and properties are used together to better describe the state of something. Similarly, to the Data Models, Data Concepts can also be children of other Data Concepts when needed to represent application domains that are specification/derivations of domains. A Data Concept can be represented by multiple Measurable Quantities.

A Data Concept is described by the following interface, as depicted in the figure below:

Measurable Quantity: Measurable Quantities represent anything that can be measurable, quantified or specific information distributed under different formats, such as images or text. Measurable Quantities may represent a property of something (e.g., mass, length, temperature, etc.), the count of an amount (just to represent some cases) or a property of a concept they are related to. For instance, when describing traffic volume in a particular model instead of quantifying it, it may be described by an enumerated variable such as low, medium, and high volumes of traffic, a property ‘type’ would be another example. Measurable quantities may represent a large spectrum of properties, ranging from static properties, passing through properties that change with time or geographic location, to responses to a questionary. Values of Measurable Quantities may be represented in different units or be dimensionless/unitless.

A Measurable Quantity is described by the following interface, as depicted in the figure below:

Unit: A Unit represents the magnitude of a specific Measurement Quantity according to a given system of units.

A Unit is described by the following interface, as depicted in the figure below: