Specializing associations

This paper proposes to apply the concept of specialization to associations. As associations are implemented as properties and subclasses are allowed to redefine inherited properties, refinement of associations occurs de facto at implementation level. It is therefore defendable to allow redefinition of associations at conceptual modeling level as well. This paper proposes a covariant approach to association inheritance and defines the semantics of this concept by means of a set-theoretic approach.status: publishe