Visual Speci cation of Complex Database Actions

The paper presents an approach to specify in an integrated way by visual, diagrammatic languages the structural and behavioural aspects of database applications. Hereby, well-known extended Entity-Relationship diagrams are employed to specify the structural aspects. The behavioural aspects of a database application are speci ed by using ViAL (Visual Action Language). ViAL speci cations are a special kind of data (or better object) ow diagrams, where so-called elementary actions are used as basic building blocks. These elementary actions are automatically derived from a given EER diagram. They guarantee that after nishing their execution all inherent integrity constraints are ful lled. The paper explains the features of the language ViAL and gives some illustrating examples.