| Title | Disentangling the Schema Turn: Restoring the Information Base to Conceptual Modelling |
|---|
| Authors | Chris Partridge, Andrew Mitchell, Sergio de Cesare and Oscar Xiberta Soto |
|---|
| Editors | Fonseca, C.M., Bernasconi, A., de Cesare, S., Bellatreche, L. and Pastor, O. |
|---|
| Type | Conference paper |
|---|
| Abstract | If one looks at contemporary mainstream development practices for conceptual modelling in computer science, these so clearly focus on a conceptual schema completely separated from its information base that the conceptual schema is often just called the conceptual model. These schema-centric practices are crystallized in almost every database textbook. We call this strong, almost universal, bias towards conceptual schemas the schema turn. The focus of this paper is on disentangling this turn within (computer science) conceptual modeling. It aims to shed some light on how it emerged and so show that it is not fundamental. To show that modern technology enables the adoption of an inclusive schema-and-base conceptual modelling approach, which in turn enables more automated, and empirically motivated practices. And to show, more generally, the space of possible conceptual modelling practices is wider than currently assumed. It also uses the example of bCLEARer to show that the implementations in this wider space will probably need to rely on new pipeline-based conceptual modelling techniques. So, it is possible that the schema turn’s complete exclusion of the information base could be merely a temporary evolutionary detour. |
|---|
| Year | 2026 |
|---|
| Conference | ER 2025 Workshops, FCM, CMLS, LLM4Modeling, OntoCom, and QUAMES |
|---|
| Publisher | Springer Nature |
|---|
| Accepted author manuscript | File Access Level Open (open metadata and files) |
|---|
| Publication dates |
|---|
| Published in print | 2026 |
|---|
| Published online | 15 Oct 2025 |
|---|
| Book title | Advances in Conceptual Modeling: ER 2025 Workshops, FCM, CMLS, LLM4Modeling, OntoCom, and QUAMES, Poitiers, France, October 20–23, 2025, Proceedings |
|---|
| ISBN | 9783032086198 |
|---|
| 9783032086204 |
|---|
| Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-08620-4_2 |
|---|
| Web address (URL) | https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-08620-4_2 |
|---|
| Page range | 26-46 |
|---|