In Defense of a Trope-Based Ontology for Conceptual Modeling: An Example with the Foundations of Attributes, Weak Entities and Datatypes

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in approaches that employ foundational ontologies as theoretical tools for analyzing and improving conceptual modeling languages. However, some of these approaches do not always make explicit their ontological commitments. This leads to situations where criticisms resulting from the specific ontological choices made by a particular approach are generalized to the enterprise of ontology as a whole. In this paper we discuss an example of such a case involving the BWW approach. First, we make explicit the ontological commitments underlying that approach by relating it to other possible philosophical alternatives. Second, we construct an ontological theory which commits to a different philosophical position. Third, we show how the ontology proposed here can be used to provide real-world semantics and sound modeling guidelines for the modeling constructs of Attributes, Weak Entities and Datatypes. Finally, we compare the ontology proposed here with BWW, thus demonstrating its benefits.