We understand this paper as a contribution to the “anatomy” of conceptual models. We propose a signature of conceptual models for their characterization, which allows a clear distinction from other types of models. The motivation for this work arose from the observation that conceptual models are widely discussed in science and practice, especially in computer science, but that their potential is far from being exploited. We combine our proposal of a more transparent explanation of the nature of conceptual models with an approach that classifies conceptual models as a link between the dimension of linguistic terms and the encyclopedic dimension of notions. As a paradigm we use the triptych, whose central tableau represents the model dimension. The effectiveness of this explanatory approach is illustrated by a number of examples. We derive a number of open research questions that should be answered to complete the anatomy of conceptual models.

我们认为本文是对概念模型的“解剖”的贡献。我们为概念模型的特征提出了签名，这可以与其他类型的模型区分开。开展这项工作的动机来自以下观察：概念模型在科学和实践中，尤其是在计算机科学中得到了广泛讨论，但是其潜力远未得到开发。我们将对概念模型的性质进行更透明解释的建议与将概念模型分类为语言术语的维度和概念的百科全书的维度的方法相结合。作为范例，我们使用三联画，其中央画面代表模型尺寸。许多示例说明了这种解释性方法的有效性。