Conceptual universal database language: Moving up the database design levels

Today, the simplicity of the relational model types affects Information Systems design. We favor another approach where the Information System designers would be able to portray directly the real world in a database model that provides more powerful and composite data types, as those of the real world. However, more powerful models, like the Frame Database Model (FDB) model, need query and manipulation languages that can handle the features of the new composite data types. We demonstrate that the adoption of such a language, the Conceptual Universal Database Language (CUDL), leads to higher database design levels: a database modeled by Entity-Relationship (ER) diagrams can be first transformed to the CUDL Abstraction Level (CAL), which can be then transformed to the FDB model. Since, the latter transformation has been previously studied, to complete the design process, we present a set of rules for the transformation from ER diagrams to CAL. © 2009 Springer