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Level of abstraction

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Knut Jetlund edited this page May 20, 2019 · 13 revisions

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Introduction

Requirement 4 in ISO19103 states that a model shall have documented a clear description of its level of abstraction.

“Level of abstraction” refers to the amount of detail captured in a model and how specific that detail is to a particular implementation. Models may range in abstraction from definitions of the underlying patterns in modelling to definitions of concepts, through to platform-specific implementation specifications.

Four main levels of abstraction are described in ISO19103:

  1. Metamodels (Most abstract - metamodels like the General Feature Model from ISO19109 and the UML Metamodel from ISO19505)

  2. Conceptual Schema - Abstract Schema (Core models with basic concepts, i.e. geometry and topology from ISO19107)

  3. Conceptual Schema - Application Schema (Still conceptual models, but specific for applications. I.e. Roads, Buildings)

  4. Implementation Schemas (Schemas for specific implementations, i.e. GML application schemas (XSD))

The figure below is an illustration of the different levels of abstraction. Figure 4 from ISO19103 (ISO/TC211 Harmonized model)

Ref OGC Domain modelling cookbook page 16-17

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