Incorporating business requirements and constraints in database conceptual models
Khaled M. Khan, Mahesha Kapurubandara, Urvashi Chadha · 2004
Entity relationship (ER) approach is predominantly used for conceptual modelling of database systems in terms of entities and their relationships. The approach does not provide su#cient support for incorporating business constraints and their impact on the entity relationships, thus leaving a gap between the requirements elicitation and database implementation. This paper makes an attempt to bridge this gap by proposing a construct that would enable the system architects to illustrate business requirements and constraints at the conceptual model with minimal e#ort. To do this, we have proposed an approach called attribute-oriented business requirements and constraints (BRCs). We classify five di#erent categories of attribute-oriented BRCs for binary relationships. Based on this approach, we propose a construct to enhance the modelling capabilities and expressiveness of the ER approach without introducing any conflict with the current features. Our main contribution in this paper is a new construct to specify the business rules and constraints along with the systems requirements in database conceptual modelling.