This volume comprises the proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on the Entity-Relationship Approach held in Karlsruhe, Germany, October 7-9, 1992. It contains the full versions of all the 22 accepted papers selected from in total 64 submissions; in addition, the two invited talks by Scheer and by Tsichritzis and others are represented asfull papers and the two other invited speakers contribute extended abstracts. All the contributions describe original research related to theoretical or practical aspects of the Entity-Relationship Approach,reflecting the trend of recent years in a wide range of database research activities. In particular, the topics database design aspects, object-orientation, integrity constraints, query languages, knowledge-based techniques, and development of new applications are addressed.

This monograph is devoted to computational morphology, particularly to the construction of a two-dimensional or a three-dimensional closed object boundary through a set of points in arbitrary position. By applying techniques from computational geometry and CAGD, new results are developed in four stages of the construction process: (a) the gamma-neighborhood graph for describing the structure of a set of points; (b) an algorithm for constructing a polygonal or polyhedral boundary (based on (a)); (c) the flintstone scheme as a hierarchy for polygonal and polyhedral approximation and localization; (d) and a Bezier-triangle based scheme for the construction of a smooth piecewise cubic boundary.

This book is a comprehensive presentation of entity-relationship (ER) modeling with regard to an integrated development and modeling of database applications. It comprehensively surveys the achievements of research in this field and deals with the ER model and its extensions. In addition, the book presents techniques for the translation of the ER model into classical database models and languages, such as relational, hierarchical, and network models and languages, as well as into object-oriented models.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on the Entity-Relationship Approach, ER '94, held in Manchester, UK in December 1994. The ER '94 book is devoted to business modelling and re-engineering and provides a balanced view between research and practical experience. The 34 full revised papers presented are organized in sections on business process modelling, enterprise modelling, systems evolution, modelling integrity constraints, object-oriented databases, active databases, CASE, reverse engineering, information system modelling, schema coordination, and re-engineering.

This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, ER '96, held in Cottbus, Germany, in October 1996. The volume presents three invited contributions together with 29 revised full papers selected from 110 submissions. The papers cover all current aspects of the entity-relationship approach and conceptual modeling; they are organized in sections on advanced schema design, processes, query languages, representation, integration, principles of database design, transformation, enhanced modelling, capturing design information, and evolution.

This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Object-Oriented and Entity-Relationship Modelling, OOER '95, held in Gold Coast, Australia in December 1995. The 36 papers presented together with an invited presentation by Gio Wiederhold were selected from a total of 120 submissions. The papers are organized in sections on object design and modelling, models and languages, reverse engineering and schema transformation, behavioral modelling, non-traditional modelling, theoretical foundations, business re-engineering, integrated approaches, cooperative work modelling, temporal data modelling, federated systems design, and industrial stream papers

This volume represents a valuable collective contribution to the research and development of database systems. It contains papers in a variety of topics such as data models, distributed databases, multimedia databases, concurrency control, hypermedia and document processing, user interface, query processing and database applications.

This volume brings together papers by experts in different areas of computer science, who have a common interest in the design and management of visual interfaces. Since cognitive science and metaphor analysis prove useful for understanding the basic mechanisms which allow visual interfaces to be easy to learn and use, these topics are also featured. Other areas focused on are: visual languages, visual database systems, intelligent agents for system interaction, graphical and pictorial communication tools, multimedia environments and specific technological developments.

Time is ubiquitous in information systems. Almost every enterprise faces the problem of its data becoming out of date. However, such data is often valu able, so it should be archived and some means to access it should be provided. Also, some data may be inherently historical, e.g., medical, cadastral, or ju dicial records. Temporal databases provide a uniform and systematic way of dealing with historical data. Many languages have been proposed for tem poral databases, among others temporal logic. Temporal logic combines ab stract, formal semantics with the amenability to efficient implementation. This chapter shows how temporal logic can be used in temporal database applica tions. Rather than presenting new results, we report on recent developments and survey the field in a systematic way using a unified formal framework [GHR94; Ch094]. The handbook [GHR94] is a comprehensive reference on mathematical foundations of temporal logic. In this chapter we study how temporal logic is used as a query and integrity constraint language. Consequently, model-theoretic notions, particularly for mula satisfaction, are of primary interest. Axiomatic systems and proof meth ods for temporal logic [GHR94] have found so far relatively few applications in the context of information systems. Moreover, one needs to bear in mind that for the standard linearly-ordered time domains temporal logic is not re cursively axiomatizable [GHR94]' so recursive axiomatizations are by necessity incomplete.

The last few years have borne witness to a remarkable diversity of formal methods, with applications to sequential and concurrent software, to real-time and reactive systems, and to hardware design. In that time, many theoretical problems have been tackled and solved, and many continue to be worked upon. Yet it is by the suitability of their industrial application and the extent of their usage that formal methods will ultimately be judged. This volume presents the proceedings of the first international symposium of Formal Methods Europe, FME'93. The symposium focuses on the application of industrial-strength formal methods. Authors address the difficulties of scaling their techniques up to industrial-sized problems, and their suitability in the workplace, and discuss techniques that are formal (that is, they have a mathematical basis) and that are industrially applicable. The volume has four parts: - Invited lectures, containing a lecture by Cliff B. Jones and a lecture by Antonio Cau and Willem-Paul de Roever; - Industrial usage reports, containing 6 reports; - Papers, containing 32 selected and refereedpapers; - Tool descriptions, containing 11 descriptions.