ConceptBase V7.1 User Manual
Matthias Jarke 
, Manfred A. Jeusfeld 
, Christoph Quix (Eds.)
RWTH Aachen, Ahornstr. 55, 52056 Aachen, Germany
Tilburg University, Warandelaan 2, 5037AB Tilburg, Netherlands
April 28, 2008
Abstract. ConceptBase is a multi-user deductive object manager intended for conceptual modeling, meta modeling, and coordination in design environments. The system implements O-Telos, a dialect of Telos integrating properties of deductive and object-oriented languages. It uniformly represents all information regardless of its abstraction level (data, class, meta class, meta meta class etc.) in a single data structure called P-facts. The powerful deductive query language is seamlessly integrated into the meta class hierarchy. Modeling is supported by meta classing, deduction and integry checking, active rule specification, functional definition of computation, a module concept, and a historical database allowing to query past states of the database. These principles are combined in ortogonal manner, e.g. deductive rules can be contained to modules, formulated for meta classes, employed in active rules using functional definitions to compute properties, and be revised without overwriting the earlier definitions. The Java-based usage environment offers an extensible palette of graphical, tabular, and textual user interfaces. The communication between the user clients and the object base is organized in a client-server architecture using TCP/IP. Further clients can be connected by an API documented in the ConceptBase programmers manual.
Contributions to this manual were made by: Lutz Bauer, Rainer Gallersdörfer, Michael Gebhardt, Rainer Hermanns, Matthias Jarke, Manfred Jeusfeld, Rainer Langohr, Thomas List, Hans Nissen, Christoph Quix, René Soiron, Martin Staudt, Ralf Stössel, and Hua Wang.
ConceptBase has been implemented with the help of numerous contributors, among others Lutz Bauer, Markus Baumeister, Ulrich Bonn, Stefan Eherer, Rainer Gallersdörfer, Michael Gebhardt, Dagmar Genenger, Michael Gocek, Rainer Hermanns, Manfred Jeusfeld, David Kensche, André Klemann, Eva Krüger, Rainer Langohr, Tobias Latzke, Thomas List, Carlos Maltzahn, Andreas Miethsam, Hans Nissen, Martin Pöschmann, Christoph Quix, Christoph Radig, Thomas Rose, Achim Schlosser, Tobias Schöneberg, René Soiron, Martin Staudt, Gerhard Steinke, Klaus Swoboda, Kai von Thadden, Hua Wang, Claudia Welter, and Thomas Wenig.