Presents Mosaico, an integrated environment conceived to support the design and specification of object-oriented database applications. Mosaico assists the designer in producing a formal and correct specification of the application domain in the form of a conceptual schema, a conceptual model of the application functions, and, finally, an executable prototype of the database application. The conceptual model of the database application is constructed by using the design language TQL++ (Type and Query Language++). The resultant TQL++ specification is semantically verified based on the theory underlying TQL++. Furthermore, through rapid prototyping, the TQL++ specification can be functionally verified. Semantic verification guarantees the correctness of the specification within the realm of the formal theory of the language. However, it does not guarantee the "fidelity" of the specification to the real world requirements (i.e. what the users really want). Rapid prototyping and functional verification are a means to bridge that gap.>

The system Mosaico [MT94] has been conceived to support the design, conceptual modeling, and rapid prototyping of data intensive applications based on Object-Oriented Databases (OODBS). The application is modeled through a graphical user interface and the produced model is encoded in TQL++, the design language on which Mosaico is based.