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.