Given the broad popularity of Internet technology, even in its present immature state, and also the recent progress made towards a human-centered view of information technology, the time now seems ripe to essentially extend the scope and power of enterprise information systems.
This carefully arranged book concentrates on the relationships between coordination technology and business application requirements and introduces general elements of a cooperative infrastructure allowing for the construction of collaborative applications. It is essential reading for research and development professionals active in the area as well as for IT managers interested in applying this promising new technology in order to remain competitive in the future.

As more and more information is being computerized, it is becoming harder and harder to share. When everything was on paper, people could read reports written by other people working in the same profession. But when everything is in the computer, it cannot be read without software that is compatible with the software that produced it. For highly structured information in databases and knowledge bases, the problem is getting worse. Even with identical software, the information cannot be used without a precise specification of its structure and meaning. Further progress in sharing and integrating information depends on formal methods for specifying meaning. This book reports on a project that addresses that problem: it adopts a formal language for specifying meaning as the central focus for systems analysis, design, and development. The formalism is conceptual graphs - a system of logic with a graphical representation that has a direct mapping to and from natural languages. As part of the project, the authors have studied a variety of notations and metho dologies that are being used for database design and systems analysis. They show how conceptual graphs can be used as a unifying language that can be translated to and from the other notations. Unlike older systems of logic, such as predicate calculus, conceptual graphs are a highly readable form of logic that clarifies rather than obscures the underlying relationships."

Dieses Buch befasst sich mit den Themenbereichen "konzeptionelle Datenmodellierung", "Metamodellierung" und "Datenbankentwurf". In mehrfacher Hinsicht erfolgt dabei eine Abkehr von traditionellen Techniken, die durch einen durchgangigen, auf Abhangigkeiten basierenden Ansatz ersetzt werden. Durch deduktive Ableitung werden aus abstrakten Modellen und Anwendungsmodellen konkrete Anwendungsabhangigkeiten ermittelt, die das Anwendungswissen des konzeptionellen Modells widerspiegeln. In einem gemeinsamen Rahmenwerk werden in diesem Buch folgende Themenkreise behandelt: - die Semantik von konzeptionellen Datenmodellierungssprachen; - die Reprasentation von konzeptionellen Anwendungsdatenmodellen; - die Konsistenzprufung von Anwendungsdaten in Bezug auf die korrespondierenden konzeptionellen Anwendungsmodelle; - die automatische Ableitung von relationalen Datenbankschemata aus konzeptionellen Anwendungsmodellen; - der Modellvergleich von unterschiedlichen konzeptionellen Anwendungsmodellen (die auch in unterschiedlichen Modellierungs sprachen formuliert sein konnen). Die Basis der Spezifikation der Semantik und die Schnittstelle zu den nachgelagerten Aufgabenbereichen sind funktionale Abhangigkeiten und Inklusionsabhangigkeiten.