Checking Constraints Consistency in UML class diagrams

Integrity constraints in database design are incident part of conceptual models, including part of semantics of problem domain. Within this paper, we have accepted UML class diagrams as the most suitable notation for database conceptual modelling. The motivation for this is popularity of UML for design of software. Nowadays, a great number of UML CASE tools are available in order to assist designers in building conceptual models. However, these tools do not provide means neither to express all kinds of integrity constraints used in conceptual modelling nor to check the consistency of models at the design stage. The first goal of this paper is to reveal types of constraints that are important for well-formed conceptual models. At a second time we will review literatures related to the study of constraints consistency in conceptual database modeling