TempoJCM++: An Extension of TempoJCM to Support Schema Change Modeling

TempoJCM (Temporal JSON Conceptual Model) is a graphical model for conceptual modeling of temporal JSON data. Like the other conceptual data models, TempoJCM allows only to model the current structure of the real world, i.e., the current entities of this world, with their current properties and their current relationships, and the current temporal format of each time-varying model component. It does not support modeling future schema changes, e.g., a property that will be added to an entity after one year, or a temporal format, associated to an entity, which will be changed after some months. Since sometimes the designer, when defining a TempoJCM model, could have information on some schema changes that should be applied at a precise time in the future, it is interesting to also model such future schema changes. In this paper, we extend TempoJCM to support future schema change modeling. The extension consists in allowing the designer to specify, on the conceptual model, (i) the valid-time interval for each model component that will be involved by a future schema change, (ii) a future change to the temporal format of a component, (iii) a future renaming of some component, and (iv) a future replace of a model component with a new simple component. We also provide an application example to motivate and illustrate our proposal.