Deriving Identity from ExtensionalityA

|In recent years, a number of proposals have been made to extend conventional conceptual data modeling techniques with concepts for modeling complex object structures. Among the most prominent proposed concepts is the concept of collection type. A collection type is an object type of which the instances are sets of instances of an other object type. A drawback of the introduction of such a new concept is that the formal deenition of the technique involved becomes considerably more complex. This is a result of the fact that collection types are populatable types and such types tend to complicate updates. In this paper it is shown how a new kind of constraint, the extensional uniqueness constraint, allows for an alternative treatment of collection types avoiding update problems. The formal deenition of this constraint type is presented, other advantages of its introduction are discussed, and its consequences for, among others, identiication schemes are elaborated.