Modeling Techniques for Multi-level Abstraction

Employing multi-level abstraction in modeling refers to representing objects at multiple levels of one or more abstraction hierarchies, mainly classification, aggregation and generalization. Multiple representation, however, leads to accidental complexity, complicating modeling and extension. Several modeling techniques, like powertypes, deep instantiation, materialization, m-objects, HERM, and the component model may be used to reduce unnecessary complexity with multilevel abstraction. This chapter compares these modeling techniques using four comparison criteria: (1) compactness (modular and redundancy-free models), (2) query flexibility (number and kind of pre-defined entry points for querying), (3) heterogeneous level-hierarchies, and (4) multiple relationship-abstractions (such as between relationship occurrence and relationship type).