What are Concepts?

The Concept oriented model deals with concepts rather then class. A concept is a combination of classes, one is a reference class and the other is an object class. When the concept fails to define its specific reference class it is then equal to a conventional class.

Object and references both have corresponding structure and behavioral methods. A simple consequence of having concepts is that the object are presented and accessed in an indirect manner, this is done by the concept using custom references with subjective domain specific structures as well as functions.

Now you might also want to know what a sub-concept or a super-concept is as well. A super-concept is a concept that is combined with other concepts in the definition of the concept. An example of this would be the concept Orders=<Addresses, Customers>, this has two super-concepts which are the Addresses and the Customers.

Remember there is always an upward directed arrow in the concept graph from a sub-concept to any of the corresponding super-concepts. Therefore the sub-concept then associated with the start of that arrow type and the super-concepts is associated with the end of that arrow.

Sub-concepts also have two parts, such as Order Parts, the formula would be Order Parts=<Products, and Orders> or Order Operations=<Orders, and operations>.

So now we have dissected the main components of the Concept Oriented Model, it is obviously important to the association of data and concepts related to that data. We can now understand the uses and functions of this model with a bit more clarity.

Though the Concept Oriented model is complex and definitely worthy of further research. It is suggested that anyone who has had their curiosity sparked by this article look further into the model, and perhaps even further explore the additional functions and uses since it can be applied to many situations.