Modeling events as entities in object-oriented conceptual modeling languages

Most current conceptual modeling languages and methods do not model events as entities. We argue that, at least in object-oriented (O-O) languages, modeling events as entities provides substantial benefits. We show that a method for behavioral modeling that deals with event and entity types in a uniform way may yield better behavioral schemas. The proposed method makes extensive use of language constructs such as constraints, derived types, derivation rules, type specializations and operations, which are present in all complete O-O conceptual modeling languages. The method can be adapted to most O-O languages. In this paper we explain its adaptation to the UML. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.