Bøger af David W. Embley

Conceptual modeling has long been recognized as the primary means to enable so- ware development in information systems and data engineering. Nowadays, conc- tual modeling has become fundamental to any domain in which organizations have to cope with complex, real-world systems. Conceptual modeling fosters communi- tion between information systems developers and end-users, and it has become a key mechanism for understanding and representing computing systems and environments of all kinds, including the new e-applications and the information systems that support them. The International Conference on Conceptual Modeling provides the premiere - rum for presenting and discussing current research and applications in which the - jor emphasis is on conceptual modeling. Topics of interest span the entire spectrum of conceptual modeling including research and practice in areas such as theories of c- cepts and ontologies underlying conceptual modeling, methods and tools for devel- ing and communicating conceptual models, and techniques for transforming conc- tual models into effective implementations. Moreover, new areas of conceptual mod- ing broaden its application to include interdependencies with knowledge-based, lo- cal, linguistic, and philosophical theories and approaches. The conference also makes major strides in fostering collaboration and exchange between academia and industry. In this year's conference, research papers focused on XML, Web services, business modeling, conceptual modeling applied to human-computer interaction, quality in conceptual modeling, conceptual modeling applied to interoperability, requirements modeling, reasoning, the Semantic Web, and metadata management. The call for papers attracted 158 research papers, whose authors represent 27 different countries.

The objective of the workshops associated with the ER'99 18th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling is to give participants access to high level presentations on specialized, hot, or emerging scientific topics. Three themes have been selected in this respect: - Evolution and Change in Data Management (ECDM'99) dealing with han- dling the evolution of data and data structure, - Reverse Engineering in Information Systems (REIS'99) aimed at exploring the issues raised by legacy systems, - The World Wide Web and Conceptual Modehng (WWWCM'99) which ana- lyzes the mutual contribution of WWW resources and techniques with con- ceptual modeling. ER'99 has been organized so that there is no overlap between conference ses- sions and the workshops. Therefore participants can follow both the conference and the workshop presentations they are interested in. I would like to thank the ER'99 program co-chairs, Jacky Akoka and Mokrane Bouzeghoub for having given me the opportunity to organize these workshops. I would also like to thank Stephen Liddle for his valuable help in managing the evaluation procedure for submitted papers and helping to prepare the workshop proceedings for publication. August 1999 Jacques Kouloumdjian Preface for ECDM'99 The first part of this volume contains the proceedings of the First International Workshop on Evolution and Change in Data Management, ECDM'99, which was held in conjunction with the 18th International Conference on Conceptual Modehng (ER'99) in Paris, France, November 15-18, 1999.