Towards a generic model for object-oriented information system modelling FAIEZ GARGOURI, 1 CHARLES FRANC Ë OIS DUCATEAU 1 and FAOUZI BOUFARE Á S 2 1 IUT de Paris, De  partement Informatique, Laboratoire LIASI, 143 Avenue de Versailles, 75016 Paris, France 2 LIPN, Universite  de Paris, 13 Avenue J.B. Clement, 93430 Villetaneuse, France Received September 1995 and accepted June 1996 With the proliferation of object-oriented methods for information systems design, and the terminology used by each one, an intermediate step is indispensable in the transition between the design and the dierent implementation environments. Regardless of any method, this step aims at the uni®cation of all concepts in a generic model called MGCO2. Keywords: Object-oriented modelling, information system, generic model 1. Introduction Historically, we can distinguish three families of metho- dological approaches for information system design and modelling. The ®rst generation includes the functional approaches analysing the system treatment as input/output. Warnier and Jackson are some examples of these methods (Warnier, 1974, 1976; Jackson, 1975). The second generation of methods treats systems as a set of entities communicating between themselves and with the external environment. The communication is established by incoming and outgoing events. The Merise French method is an example of this generation (Tardieu et al., 1983, 1985). The third generation represents methods based on the object-oriented approach. It is the result of the emergence of the object philosophy in the new software development techniques. OOD, GOOD (Booch, 1986, 1987) HOOD (Heitz, 1989), OOA (Yourdon and Coad, 1991), OMT (Rumbaugh et al., 1991), OOAD (Shlaer and Mellor, 1991), OFM (Andonof, 1992), O  (Cauvet and Rolland, 1991; Brunet, 1993), MCO (Castellani, 1993) and M  -Ob- ject (DiLeva et al., 1991) are examples of approaches that support conceptual modelling in an object-oriented way. Some comparisons and presentations of object-oriented models can be found, for example, in Monarchi and Puhr (1992), Afcet (1993) and Bouzeghoub et al. (1994). Inside an organization, dierent services have usually dierent purposes. Thus it is not always easy to select and apply a single method to design the information system of the whole organization. Each department's information subsystem can than be modelled by using dierent form- alisms (e.g. OMT, OOAD). The need for harmonization of formalisms is essential in order to have the ®nal organi- zation's information system (Boufare Ás et al., 1995). In ad- dition, with the proliferation of object-oriented methods for information systems design, an intermediate step is indispensable in the transition between the design and the dierent implementation environments. Our aim is on the one hand to bridge the gap between object-oriented con- ceptual modelling and dierent implementation environ- ments, and on the other hand to harmonize dierent information system methodologies. To reach this aim, we shall present a generic model supporting the dierent concepts proposed by dierent information system analysis and design methods: MGCO2 (Gargouri, 1995). Figure 1 represents the purpose of MGCO2. We presented in Kraõ Èem et al. (1993) some mapping rules to translate object-oriented representations into object-or- iented environments. In Boufae Ás et al. (1994) and Gargouri et al. (1994) we presented the mapping rules from an ob- ject-oriented representation to the relational environments. This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the MGCO2 generic concepts. Section 3 gives the mapping rules from object-oriented methods to MGCO2. Some concluding remarks are presented in the last section. *Author to whom all correspondence should be addressed. Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing (1997) 8, 31 ± 39 0021-891X Ó 1996 Chapman & Hall