Database design according to user views

The authors introduce a conceptual start schema, which describes a relational database schema and contains a set of relational schemata, a set of inter- and intrarelational dependencies, and a set of user views. It is shown how the start schema can be decomposed into fragments according to the dependencies between different object types, according to dependencies between attributes, and according to the different user views. Fragments are represented by RM/T-relations in 4NF. The model itself is extended by catalog relations to represent metainformation about relations, relationships, and user views. Furthermore, some suggestions on how to represent the semantics of user views are given