This paper describes a language that is intended to support software engineers in the development of information systems throughout the software lifecycle. This language is not a programming language. Following the example of a number of other software engineering projects, our work is based on the premise that information system development is knowledge-intensive and that the primary responsibility of any language intended to support this task is to be able to formally represent the relevant knowledge.

. Requirements engineering (RE) is perceived as an area of growing importance. Due to the increasing effort spent for research in this area many contributions to solve different problems within RE exist. The purpose of this paper is to identify the main goals to be reached during the requirements engineering process in order to develop a framework for RE. This framework consists of the three dimensions: . the specification dimension . the representation dimension . the agreement dimension Looking at the RE research using this framework, the different approaches can be classified and therefore their interrelationships become much clearer. Additionally the framework offers a first step towards a common understanding of RE. + This work was supported by ESPRIT Basic Research Action 6353 (NATURE) which is concerned with Novel Approaches to Theories Underlying Requirements Engineering and by the state Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. 1 Introduction There is general agreement among softwa...

In this paper, we introduce a knowledge-based meta-model which serves as a unified resource model for integrating characteristics of major types of objects appearing in software development models (SDMs). The URM consists of resource classes and a web of relations that link different types of resources found in different kinds of models of software development. The URM includes specialized models for software systems, documents, agents, tools, and development processes. The URM has served as the basis for integrating and interoperating a number of process-centered CASE environments. The major benefit of the URM is twofold: First, it forms a higher level of abstraction supporting SDM formulation that subsumes many typical models of software development objects. Hence, it enables a higher level of reusability for existing support mechanisms of these models. Second, it provides a basis to support complex reasoning mechanisms that address issues across different types of software objects. ...

ion-based Analogical Inference, in Analogical Reasoning, edited by D.H. Helman, Kluwer Academic Publishers,p. 147-170 [Grosz & Rolland 1990]: G. Grosz, C. Rolland; Using artificial intelligence techniques to formalize the information system design process; Proc. Intl. Conf. Databases and Expert Systems Applications, 374-380. [Grosz & Rolland 1991] G. Grosz, C. Rolland; Why and how should we hide conceptual models; Proc. 3rd Intl. Conf. Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (SEKE), Skokie, USA, 28-33 [Guindon 1990] Guindon R.: Designing the design process: exploiting opportunistic thoughts, Human-Computer Interaction Journal 5, 305-344 [Guindon & Curtis 1988] Guindon R. and Curtis B.: Control of cognitive processes during software design: what tools are needed? Proc. ACM-CHI'88, 263-269 [Hagelstein 1988] Hagelstein J.: Declarative approach to information systems requirements. Knowledge Based Systems, 1, 4, 211-220 [Hahn et al. 1991] U. Hahn, M. Jarke, T. Rose: Teamwork support ...

This paper therefore advocates an experience-based approach in which methods and tools can be defined, applied, evaluated, and gradually improved. We argue that this requires three ingredients: . a process meta model which can deal with many different situations in a flexible, decision-oriented manner; . a process repository that links process and product traces, guidance, and improvement through carefully defined concept mappings; . a tool interoperability concept in which tool behavior adapts to the present process definition and situation, and where tools automatically trace their own behavior. The interplay of these ingredients is demonstrated in the NATURE requirements engineering environment . *

Abstract. Extraction-Transformation-Loading (ETL) tools are pieces of software responsible for the extraction of data from several sources, their cleansing, customization and insertion into a data warehouse. Literature and personal experience have guided us to conclude that the problems concerning the ETL tools are primarily problems of complexity, usability and price. To deal with these problems we provide a uniform metamodel for ETL processes, covering the aspects of data warehouse architecture, activity modeling, contingency treatment and quality management. The ETL tool we have developed, namely ARKTOS, is capable of modeling and executing practical ETL scenarios by providing explicit primitives for the capturing of common tasks. ARKTOS provides three ways to describe an ETL scenario: a graphical point-and-click front end and two declarative languages: XADL (an XML variant), which is more verbose and easy to read and SADL (an SQL-like language) which has a quite compact syntax and is, thus, easier for authoring. Key words: data warehousing, data quality, extraction-transformation-loading tools 1.

Conceptual modelling refers to the part of system development that involves investigating the problems and requirements of the users community and from that, developing a specification of the desired system. Conceptual modelling addresses two major aspects: the conceptual product (the so-called conceptual schema) and the conceptual process (the modelling process to deliver the conceptual product). Contributions to the field of conceptual modelling have emphasized the product aspect. A large variety of conceptual models have proposed high level concepts and abstraction mechanisms by which systems may be described at a conceptual level. Conceptual models have proved to be extremely useful throughout the information system life cycle and, hence, to be one of the most fundamental tools in the area of information systems engineering. However the growing demand for large and complex information systems calls for the introduction of new and more precise, formal techniques to model reality....

Previous research has provided metadata models that enable the capturing of the static components

. The purpose of a computerized information system is to improve data-intensive business processes in an organization. The development of such systems itself is data-intensive. Tools have been developed to support the development process, among others repository systems which serve as the common database used by the development team. This paper reports on application experience with the ConceptBase system which we developed over the last 12 years. Eight applications are presented in more detail to show which properties the users demanded and how different applications used the base functionalities of the system in a different way. In summary, extensibility, performance, and advanced query facilities turned out to be most important. 1 Introduction In the late seventies, database researchers felt the need for a design language which not only covers the static aspects of a database, i.e. its schema, but also dynamic aspects, e.g. transactions. A wellknown example is the Taxis de...

. Previous research has provided metadata models that enable the capturing of the static components of a Data Warehouse (DW) architecture, along with information on different quality factors over these components. This paper complements this work with the modeling of the dynamic parts of the DW, i.e., with a metamodel for DW operational processes. The proposed metamodel is capable of modeling complex activities, their interrelationships, and the relationship of activities with data sources and execution details. Finally, the metamodel complements proposed architecture and quality models in a coherent fashion, resulting in a full framework for DW metamodeling, capable of supporting the design, administration and evolution of a DW. We have implemented this metamodel using the language Telos and the metadata repository system ConceptBase. 1 Introduction Data Warehouses (DW) are complex and data-intensive systems that integrate data from multiple heterogeneous information sour...