THE DESIGN OF A HYBRID AUTHORING TOOL FOR MODELING COMPLEX BUSINESS APPLICATIONS

This article describes the design and implementation of a general purp ose complete function for modelling complex business processes accordi ng to their requirements. The unique features of this system are the o bject-oriented architecture of linking various database systems and th e knowledge based approach for controlling the semantics of data model . From the application point of view, its simple user interface provid es users with the facilities for creating object and relationship type s, examining object definitions, browsing objects and moving objects t o locations specified by users. As a hybrid system, it not only allows users to use conventional data model methods to model their business bur also to exchange data between different database systems. In this paper we will first discuss the fundamental implementation mechanisms of this system and the associated design methodologies. We then use so me screen pictures to demonstrate the usage of GORML. (C) 1997 Elsevie r Science Ltd. All rights reserved.