This book is based on a PhD dissertation which was accepted by the faculty of Law and Economics at the University of Bern, Switzerland. The ideas presented were partially developed in a research project founded by the Swiss National Sci ence Foundation in 1993 and 1994. This research project was concerned with evaluating the application of database triggers and active databases for the im plementation of business rules. We recognized among other things the lack of a methodology for modeling such business rules on the conceptual level. Therefore, this became the focus of the follow-up research which resulted in this book. All this work would not have been possible without the help of several people. First of all, I would like to give special thanks to my thesis supervisor Prof. Dr. Gerhard Knolmayer. He not only initiated the research project and found an in dustry partner, but also provided very valuable ideas, and critically reviewed and discussed the resulting publications. Furthermore, I would like to express my thanks to the second thesis supervisor Prof. Dr. Sham Navathe from Georgia In stitute of Technology who influenced my work with results from a former re search project and who agreed to evaluate the resulting PhD Dissertation.
