An Executable Visual Formalism for Object-Oriented Conceptual Modeling

: Conceptual modeling aims at establishing the conceptual knowledge necessary for proper communication between a development team and users. This paper presents an executable visual formalism for object-oriented conceptual modeling of information systems. This formalism is an integration of the Entity-Relationship approach, Petri nets, relational calculus, and time temporal logic. It supports integrated and encapsulated modeling of the structural and behavioral aspects of objects, and object evolution. The formalism has textual and graphical representations, allows formal analysis of model properties, and supports rapid prototyping. An environment and a methodology for conceptual modeling also are described. 1 Introduction Information systems conceptual modeling is an application-oriented, as opposed to computeroriented, process that aims to establish conceptual knowledge about an application domain. It is motivated by the extremely high costs associated with the failure to identify a ..