This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, ER '98, held in Singapore, in November 1998. The 32 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 95 submissions. The book is divided into chapters on conceptual modeling and design, user interface modeling, information retrieval on the Web, semantics and constraints, conceptual modeling tools, quality and reliability metrics, industrial experience in conceptual modeling, object-oriented database management systems, data warehousing, industrial case studies, object-oriented approaches.

This book provides a comprehensive state-of-the-art, in conceptual modeling. It grew out of research papers presented at the 18th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER '99) and arranged by the editors. The plan of the conference is to cover the whole spectrum of conceptual modeling as it relates to database and information systems design and to offer a complete coverage of data and process modeling, database technology, and database applications. The aim of the conference and of these proceedings is to present new insights related to each of these topics. This book contains both selected and invited papers. The 33 selected papers are organized in 11 sessions encompassing the major themes of the conference, especially : - schema transformation, evolution, and integration - temporal database design - views and reuse in conceptual modeling - advanced conceptual modeling - business process modeling and workflows - data warehouse design. Besides the selected papers, 3 invited papers present the views of three keynote speakers, internationally known for their contribution to conceptual modeling and database research and for their active role in knowledge dissemination. Peter Chen presents the results of his ongoing research on ER model, XML, and the Web. Georges Gardarin presents the first results of an ESPRIT project federating various data sources with XML and XML-QL. Finally, Matthias Jarke develops a way to capture and evaluate the experiences gained about process designs in so-called process data warehouses.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, ER 2001, held in Tokohama, Japan, in November 2001. The 45 revised full papers presented together with three keynote presentations were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 197 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on spatial databases, spatio-temporal databases, XML, information modeling, database design, data integration, data warehouse, UML, conceptual models, systems design, method reengineering and video databases, workflows, web information systems, applications, and software engineering.

For more than 20 years, the series of Conceptual Modeling – ER conferences has provided a forum for research communities and practitioners to present and - change research results and practical experiences in the ?elds of database design and conceptual modeling. Throughout the years, the scope of these conferences has extended from database design and speci?c topics of that area to more u- versal or re?ned conceptual modeling, organizing originally weak or ill-structured information or knowledge in more cultured ways by applying various kinds of principles, abstract models, and theories, for di?erent purposes. At the same time, many technically oriented approaches have been developed which aim to facilitate the implementation of rather advanced conceptual models. Conceptual modeling is based on the process of conceptualization, and it is the core of system structuring as well as justi?cation for information systems development. It supports and facilitates the understanding, explanation, pred- tion, and reasoning on information and knowledge, and their manipulation in the systems, in addition to understanding and designing the functions of the systems. The conceptualization process aims at constructing concepts relevant for the knowledge and information system in question. Concepts in the human mind and concept descriptions in computerized information systems are quite di?erent things by nature, but both should be taken into account in conceptual modeling. Usually concept descriptions are properly observed, but concepts in the human mind and their properties are often neglected quite carelessly.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, ER 2000, held in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA in October 2000. The 37 revised full papers presented together with three invited papers and eight industrial abstracts were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 140 submitted papers. The book offers topical sections on database integration, temporal and active database modeling, database and data warehouse design techniques, analysis patterns and ontologies, Web-based information systems, business process modeling, conceptual modeling and XML, engineering and multimedia application modeling, object-oriented modeling, applying object-oriented technology, quality in conceptual modeling, and application design using UML.

Conceptual modeling is fundamental to any domain where one must cope with complex real-world situations and systems because it fosters communication - tween technology experts and those who would bene?t from the application of those technologies. Conceptual modeling is the key mechanism for und- standing and representing the domains of information system and database - gineering but also increasingly for other domains including the new “virtual” e-environmentsandtheinformationsystemsthatsupportthem.Theimportance of conceptual modeling in software engineering is evidenced by recent interest in “model-drivenarchitecture”and“extremenon-programming”.Conceptualm- eling also plays a prominent rolein various technical disciplines and in the social sciences. The Annual International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (referred to as the ER Conference) provides a central forum for presenting and discussing current research and applications in which conceptual modeling is the major emphasis. In keeping with this tradition, ER 2005, the 24th ER Conference, spanned the spectrum of conceptual modeling including research and practice in areas such as theories of concepts and ontologies underlying conceptual m- eling, methods and tools for developing and communicating conceptual models, and techniques for transforming conceptual models into e?ective (information) system implementations. Moreover, new areas of conceptual modeling incl- ing Semantic Web services and the interdependencies of conceptual modeling with knowledge-based, logical and linguistic theories and approaches were also addressed.

This book constitutes the refereed joint proceedings of four international workshops held in conjunction with the 22nd International Conference on Conceptual Modelling, ER 2003, held in Chicago, IL, USA in October 2003. The 35 revised full papers presented together with introduction to the four workshops were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. In accordance with the respective workshops, the papers are organized in topical sections on conceptual modelling approaches for e-business, conceptual modelling quality, agent-oriented information systems, XML data and schema.

The objective of the workshops held in conjunction with ER 2002, the 21st International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, was to give participants the opportunitytopresentanddiscussemerginghottopics,thusaddingnewpersp- tives to conceptual modeling. To meet this objective, we selected the following four workshops: – 2nd InternationalWorkshop on Evolution and Changein Data Management (ECDM 2002) – ER/IFIP8. 1 Workshop on Conceptual Modelling Approaches to Mobile - formation Systems Development (MobIMod 2002) – International Workshop on Conceptual Modeling Quality (IWCMQ 2002) – 3rd International Joint Workshop on Conceptual Modeling Approaches for E-business: a Web Service Perspective (eCOMO 2002) ER 2002 was organized so that there would be no overlap between the c- ference sessions and the workshops. This proceedings contains workshop papers that wererevisedby the authors following discussions during the conference. We are deeply indebted to the members of the organizing committees and program committees of these workshops for their hard work. July 2003 Antoni Oliv ́ e, Masatoshi Yoshikawa, and Eric S. K. Yu Workshop Co-chairs ER 2002 ECDM 2002 Change is a fundamental but sometimes neglected aspect of information and database systems. The management of evolution and change and the ability of database, information and knowledge-based systems to deal with change is an essential component in developing and maintaining truly useful systems. Many approachestohandlingevolutionandchangehavebeenproposedinvariousareas of data management, and this forum seeks to bring together researchers and practitioners from both more established areas and from emerging areas to look at this issue.

The idea that “measuring quality is the key to developing high-quality software systems” is gaining relevance. Moreover, it is widely recognised that the key to obtaining better software systems is to measure the quality characteristics of early artefacts, produced at the conceptual modelling phase. Therefore, improving the quality of conceptual models is a major step towards the improvement of software system development.Since the 1970s, software engineers had been proposing high quantities of metrics for software products, processes and resources but had not been paying any special attention to conceptual modelling. By the mid-1990s, however, the need for metrics for conceptual modelling had emerged. This book provides an overview of the most relevant existing proposals of metrics for conceptual models, covering conceptual models for both products and processes.