Abstract
The Entity Relationship approach is used in many databases and information systems design methodology and tools. Its use is expanded to new types of applications and the ER-Model itself is being developed to meet new requirements based on the advanced modelling approach. In this paper we discuss the representation of static and dynamic aspects in information systems with an extended Entity-Relationship-Model Particular attention is given to a unified view of both aspects by a behaviour integrated Entity-Relationship Model.
A framework of modelling static components and dynamic processes in an information system is described. To model the static component we used an extended Entity-Relationship diagram and for the dynamic model we used a Petri net based graph representation.
A dynamic process will be decomposed into basic, elementary and complex activities Each elementary activity is bounded with one entity of a certain entity set.
Complex activities are defined as interface between at least two elementary processes which are identified by different entities.
The second part of the paper will describe a tool which is built on the basis of the methodology described above. The tool is implemented in C++ and ET++ on a Sparc Workstation. For the underlying database we use the commercially availabel database system Oracle.
The experiences with this tool show that the design of information systems can be supported in a very efficient manner and because of the integrity managementfacilities the schemas created are always tested on ther correctness. Furthermore the graphic method allows a stepwise extension of defined schemas.
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Gierlinger, C., Min Tjoa, A., Wagner, R.R. (1992). A methodology for computer aided modelling of information systems based on the extended entity relationship model BIER. In: Pichler, F., Díaz, R.M. (eds) Computer Aided Systems Theory — EUROCAST '91. EUROCAST 1991. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 585. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0021044
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0021044
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