The IDEA tool set

Summary form only given. The authors demonstrate the main results of the Esprit Project P6333 IDEA, which lasted from June 1992 to March 1997, whose main contributors are five industrial partners from five European countries: Bull, the main contractor (France), TXT-Informatica (Italy), Sema (Spain), Dutch PTT (Holland), and Bim (Belgium), and four research institutes: ECRC in Munich, INRIA in Paris, the University of Bonn, and Politecnico di Milano. The main objective of the IDEA Project is to investigate the use and promote the spread of object-oriented and rule-based technologies in next-generation information systems. One of the major results of the IDEA Project is the IDEA Methodology and its supporting environment. The IDEA Methodology addresses the analysis, design, prototyping, and implementation of modern database systems applications, taking advantage of modern approaches developed in the context of database design, but also in the broader area of object-oriented software engineering. The distinguishing feature of the IDEA Methodology is the emphasis on both deductive rules and active rules, which significantly enrich the semantics supported within database applications