Integrating non-functional requirements into data modeling

Complex information systems need conceptual models to deal with aspects beyond the usual entity and activity framework. Recent research has pointed out that conceptual models need to deal with goals, in order to model complex situations that happen in the real world. Our work investigated a new strategy that allows the integration of non-functional requirements (NFR) into data models. Integration is done by representing the NFRs in a data model and investigating how NFR's satisfaction affects the data model. We adopted the widely used ER conceptual model as the data modeling representation schema. In order to start the validation of our strategy we applied it to a real system. The results so far confirm our hypothesis that NFR's integration into data models do help in achieving better understanding of what is being modeled.