Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Evolution of research and practice in the area of conceptual modelling for information systems during more than four decades is examined. It focuses on activities related to research and practice in the early system development phases. It comments on a large number of modelling methods published in the 1960-ies, 70-ies, and 80-ies as well as on the report “Concepts and Terminology of the Conceptual Schema and the Information Base” reporting the work by the ISO working group ISO/TC97/SC5/WG5 in the early 80-ies. Approaches which are based on a temporal and deductive view of the application domain as well as object-oriented modelling languages are acknowledged. The paper continues with a discussion of principles and research problems related to a topic we call “Enterprise Modelling” and “Ontology Modelling”. The of conceptual modelling in information systems development during all these decades is seen as an approach for capturing fuzzy, ill-defined, informal “real-world” descriptions and user requirements, and then transforming them to formal, in some sense complete, and consistent conceptual specifications. During the last two decades an additional role of modelling has evolved - to support user and stakeholder participation in enterprise analysis and requirements formulation and in development of shared conceptualisations of specific domains.

Fact-oriented modeling is a conceptual approach that enables one to model and query business domains in terms of the underlying facts of interest, where all facts and rules may be verbalized in language readily understandable by non-technical users of those business domains. Unlike Entity-Relationship modeling and object-oriented modeling, fact-oriented modeling treats all facts as relationships (unary, binary, ternary etc.). Grouping of facts into attribute-based structures (e.g. ER entities, UML objects, database relations, XML elements) is considered a lower level, implementation issue that is irrelevant to capturing the essential business semantics. This chapter provides a brief history of the fact-oriented modeling approach, illustrates its main concepts and benefits via a case study, reviews the current state of the art in terms of methodology and tooling perspectives, and identifies several topics for future research.

Data integration is one of the older research fields in the database area and has emerged shortly after database systems were first introduced into the business world. In this paper, we briefly introduce the problem of integration and, based on an architectural perspective, give an overview of approaches to address the integration issue. We discuss the evolution from structural to semantic integration and shortly present our own research in the SIRUP (Semantic Integration Reflecting User-specific semantic Perspectives) approach. Finally, an outlook to challenging areas of future research in the realm of data integration is given.

Database and information systems technology has substantially changed. Nowadays, content management systems, (information-intensive) web services, web information systems, collaborating systems, internet databases, OLAP information systems, distributed and nomadic information systems, etc. have become challenges to current technology. At the same time, object-relational technology has gained the maturity for being widely applied. Conceptual modelling has not (yet) covered all these novel topics. It has been concentrated for more than two decades around specification of structures. Meanwhile, it is accepted that functionality, interactivity and distribution must be included into conceptual modelling of xyz information systems.

In this paper we demonstrate how achievements of conceptual modelling can be exploited for development of user-oriented content management systems and for the development of distributed and collaborating information systems.

Content and content management have become buzzwords. They are still heavily overloaded, not well understood or defined and heavily misused. Moreover, the user dimension is not yet incorporated. We base this approach on proposals made by the Scandinavian school of conceptual modelling and especially on work of A. Sølvberg.

Specification of distribution has neglected over a long period. Instead of explicit specification of distribution, multi-database systems and federated database systems have been extensively discussed in the literature. We develop a specification framework for collaborating information systems by intertwining and integrating specification of communication, coordination and cooperation.

The paper reviews a line of conceptual-modelling research that originated in Arne Sølvberg’s Information Systems Group at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in the 1980-ies. The line of research has since produced results such as facet modelling, ontological analyses and evaluations of modelling languages and a template-based approach to modelling-construct description. Currently, focus is on developing a revised version of the Unified Enterprise Modelling Language (UEML). Finally, the paper offers paths for further work.

Various kinds of data are processed in workflow management systems: from case data to control data, from internal data to access to external databases or documents exchanged in inter-organizational workflows. We propose a uniform treatment of all kinds of business data in workflows. This is achieved by an abstraction mechanism which enables the transparent access to data in any source in a uniform way. Moreover, we ensure simplicity by binding the human user interface layer of the workflow system with XML-based forms. The concept contributes to transparency of data location, and logical and physical independence of data, business logic and presentation in workflow systems. It facilitates the reuse of predefined activities and forms on different data sets and eases the interaction of a workflow with its environment by abstracting from the actual representation of data.

In enterprise systems projects, modeling is used both to configure the application and work out more efficient work processes. Due to the complexity and volatility of the domain, these projects tend to be very expensive and can easily fail and threaten the whole existence of the enterprise. This paper emphasizes the use of models in these projects and exposes some of the challenges they need to deal with. We present some recent work that may help us apply conceptual modeling more successfully when developing new business processes and configuring new systems. In particular we discuss how models may be expanded with performance-related information that is needed to assess the quality of the business processes supported by the computerized enterprise system.

In order to cope with increasingly complex business and IT environments, organisations need effective instruments for managing their knowledge about these environments. Essential among these instruments are enterprise models that represent an organisation including its domain of work, processes, and context. Most enterprise models have focussed on information and process structures, but there has recently also been a growing interest in goal models, describing the intention of actors. We suggest that there is a need for an additional type of model, often called value model or business model, that focuses on the value created and interchanged between actors in a business environment. This kind of model provides a clear and declarative foundation for other kinds of enterprise models and they will become increasingly important in managing a complex environment characterised by collaboration, variety, and change.

Conceptual modelling has emerged as a means to capture the relevant aspects of the world on which it is necessary to provide information. Whereas conceptual models succeeded in telling us how to represent some excerpt of the world in informational terms, they failed to guide system analysts in conceptualising purposeful systems, i.e. systems that meet the expectations of their users. This chapter aims to investigate this issue of conceptualising purposeful systems and to discuss the role that goal driven approaches can play to resolve it. It considers the challenge of new systems having a multifaceted purpose and shows how intention/strategy maps help facing this challenge.

We present a framework for conceptual modeling, requirements analysis and design of agent-based systems. The framework is rooted in the Belief Desire Intention (BDI) formalism and extends the Unified Modeling Language (UML) to model multi-agent systems. We introduce several modeling constructs including Agent, Belief, Goal, Plan, FIPA Performative, KQML-Performative, and Blackboard. In addition, we introduce Agent Goal Diagram to model the relationships between the goals and the environment of an agent; Use Case Goal Diagram to model the relationships between use cases and goals; Agent Domain Model to facilitate understanding of domain knowledge of an agent; Agent Sequence Diagram to model interactions within an agent. Similarly, Agent Activity Diagram and Agent Statechart Diagram are introduced. We illustrate the framework through an agent-based intelligent elevator system.