Conceptual models are applied as the first step in software design methodologies for collecting the semantics involved in the universe of discourse. Nevertheless, the abstraction process creates some misunderstandings for novice designers, such as difficulties in modeling some constructs and in understanding the semantics that they represent. This…

Semantic integrity constraints are business-specific rules that limit the permissible values in a database. For example, a university rule dictating that an "incomplete" grade cannot be changed to an A constrains the possible states of the database. To maintain database integrity, business rules should be identified in the course of database…