Computer system for creating semantic object models from existing relational database schemas

DETAILED DESCRIPTION The present invention is a computer system programmed to automatically create a semantic object model from an existing relational database schema.
The schema is analyzed by reading the catalog information of the relational database and creating a corresponding semantic object for each table defined in the database.
Each column defined for a table of the database is used to create a corresponding simple value attribute within the corresponding semantic object.
If the database catalog includes relationship information, the catalog is then analyzed to determine whether a table includes any foreign keys.
The foreign key information is used to create corresponding object link attributes that define relationships between two or more semantic objects as well as to create multivalued group attributes or multivalued, simple value attributes within a semantic object.
If the database catalog does not provide relational information, the user is prompted to indicate tables in the database that are related as well as to indicate which columns in tables represent foreign keys.
This information is used then to modify the semantic object model to reflect the relationships and multivalued attributes within the semantic object model.