Dr. Peter Pin-Shan Chen (Chinese: 陳品山) is an American computer scientist. He is a Distinguished Career Scientist and faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University, who is known for the development of Entity-Relationship Model in 1976.

Biography[link]

Born in Taichung, Taiwan, Peter Chen received a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1968 at the National Taiwan University, and a Ph.D. in computer science/applied mathematics at the Harvard University in 1973. In 1970, he worked one summer at IBM. After graduated from Harvard, he worked one year at Honeywell and one summer at Digital Equipment Corporation.

From 1974 to 1978 Chen was an Assistant Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. From 1978 to 1983 he was Associate Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA Management School). From 1983 to 2011 Chen held the position of M. J. Foster Distinguished Chair Professor of Computer Science at Louisiana State University and, for several years, Adjunct Professor in its Business School and Medical School (Shreveport).^[1] During this time period, he was a Visiting Professor once at Harvard in '89-'90 and three times at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (EECS Dept. in '86-'87, Sloan School in '90-'91, and Division of Engineering Systems in 06-'07). Since 2008, he has been Honorary Chair Professor in the Institute of Service Science at National Tsing Hua University. Currently, Chen is a Distinguished Career Scientist and faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University.

Awards and Honors[link]

Chen's original paper^[2] is one of the most influential papers in the computer software field based on a survey of more than 1,000 computer science professors documented in a book on "Great Papers in Computer Science".^[3][4] Chen's work is also cited in a book Software Challenges published by Time-Life Books in 1993 in the series on "Understanding Computers." Chen is recognized as one of the pioneers in a book on "Software Pioneers".^[5]

Chen has received many awards in the fields of Information Technology.^[6] He received the Data Resource Management Technology Award from the Data Administration Management Association in New York City in 1990. He was elected as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), IEEE, and ER^[7]. He won the Achievement Award in Information Management in 2000 from DAMA International. He was an inductee into the Data Management Hall of Fame in 2000. He received the Stevens Award in Software Method Innovation in 2001. In 2003, Chen received the IEEE Harry H. Goode Memorial Award at the IEEE-CS Board of Governors meeting in San Diego. He was presented with the ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award at the ACM Banquet in San Diego in June 2003 and International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Acapulco in August 2003. Chen is also the recipient of the Pan Wen-Yuan Outstanding Research Award in 2004.^[8] In June 2011 in Jeju Island, Korea, Chen received the Transformative Achievement Medal from Software Engineering Society and the Society for Design and Process Science.

Chen's work initiated a new field of research and practice called, "Conceptual Modeling". Since 1979, an annual international professional conference on conceptual modeling has been held in different countries.^[9] To recognize Chen's pioneering leadership role, "Peter P. Chen Award" was established in 2008, to be given to one excellent researcher/educator in the conceptual modeling field each year.^[10]

Work[link]

Entity-Relationship Modeling and Data/Conceptual Modeling[link]

The Entity-Relationship Model model serves as the foundation of many systems analysis and design methodologies, computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools, and repository systems. The ER Model is the basis for IBM's Repository Manager/MVS and DEC's CDD/Plus.

Dr. Peter Chen's original paper^[11] is commonly cited as the definitive reference for Entity Relationship Modelling. Chen is one of the pioneers of using the entity relationship concepts in software and information system modeling and design. Before Chen's paper, the basic entity relationship ideas were used mostly informally by practitioners. Chen first published an abstract and presented his ER model in the First Very Large Database Conference in 1975, the same year of a paper with similar concepts written by A. P. G. Brown.^[12] Chen's main contributions are: formalized the concepts, developed a theory with a set of data definition and manipulation operations, and specified the translation rules from the ER model to several major types of databases (including the Relational Database). He also popularized the model and introduced it to the academic literature.

The ER Model was adopted as the meta model ANSI Standard in Information Resource Directory System (IRDS), and the ER approach has been ranked at the top methodology for database design and one of the top methodologies in systems development by several surveys of Fortune 500 companies.^[13]

Computer-Aided Software Engineering[link]

Chen’s work is a cornerstone of software engineering,^[13] in particular Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE). In the late 80’s and early 90’s, IBM’s Application Development Cycle (AD/Cycle) framework and DB2 repository (RM/MVS) were based on the ER model. Other vendors’ repository systems such as Digital’s CDD+ were also based on the ER model. Chen has had a significant impact on the CASE industry through his research and his lecturing around the world on structured system development methodologies. The ER model has influenced most of the major CASE tools, including Computer Associates’ ERWIN, Oracle Corporation’s Designer/2000, and Sybase’s PowerDesigner (and even a general drawing tool like Microsoft Visio), as well as the IDEF1X standard.^[13] The ER model is also the basis for Microsoft's ADO.NET Entity Framework.

The hypertext concept, which makes the World Wide Web extremely popular, is very similar to the main concept in the ER model. Chen investigated this linkage as an invited expert of several XML working groups of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

The ER model also serves as the foundation of some of the recent work on Object-oriented analysis and design methodologies and Semantic Web. The UML modeling language has its roots in the ER model.

Cyber Security and Terrorist Detection[link]

In recent years, he led a multidisciplinary research team in developing new efficient and effective techniques in identifying terrorists and malicious cyber transactions.

Publications[link]

Peter P. Chen published several books, papers and articles. Books, a selection:

• 2007. Active Conceptual Modeling of Learning: Next Generation Learning-Base System Development. With Leah Y. Wong (Eds.). Springer.
• 1999. Advances in Conceptual Modeling: ER'99 Workshops on Evolution and Change in Data Management, Reverse Engineering in Information Systems, and the World ... (Lecture Notes in Computer Science). With David W. Embley, Jacques Kouloumdjian, Stephen W. Liddle and John F. Roddick (Eds.) Springer Verlag.
• 1999. Conceptual Modeling: Current Issues and Future Directions (Lecture Notes in Computer Science) With Jacky Akoka, Hannu Kangassalo, and Bernhard Thalheim.
• 1985. Data & Knowledge Engineering, Volume 1, Number 1, 1985.
• 1981. Entity Relationship Approach to Information Modeling and Analysis.
• 1980. Entity relationship approach to systems analysis and design. North-Holland.

Articles, a selection:

• 1976. "The Entity-Relationship Model--Toward a Unified View of Data". In: ACM Transactions on Database Systems 1/1/1976 ACM-Press ISSN 0362-5915, S. 9–36
• 2002. "Entity-Relationship Modeling--Historical Events, Future Trends, and Lessons Learned". In: Software Pioneers: Contributions to Software Engineering. Broy M. and Denert, E. (eds.), Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Lecturing Notes in Computer Sciences, June 2002, pp. 100-114.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Home page of Dr. Peter Chen at Louisiana State University