Using Hypersets to Represent Semistructured Data

This paper presents a new metamodel based on partially ordered hypersets. The metamodel is minimalist, its only primitives being atoms, potentially infinite hypersets and partial order. The type system is very loose and supports concurrent extensional and intensional definition of types. Every element of the metamodel can be directly referenced, thanks to a powerful automated reification facility. These characteristics make the metamodel well adapted to integrating semistructured data. The metamodel is also compared to a few other information representation formalisms to demonstrate that it subsumes them all and to exhibit some of their problems.