Successful information systems (IS) development requires the under- standing of the real world domain in which the IS is situated in and of which it is a representation. Developing such an understanding is the role of systems analy- sis, the first major step in IS development. Conceptual models developed during systems analysis are used to support understanding of and communication about the real world domain. Recent years have seen the emergence of the object-oriented approach in general and UML special cally for IS design and implementation. However, no generally accepted modelling language has been proposed for use during IS analysis. This study will examine the suitability of UML as a conceptual modelling lan- guage. This study comprises two parts. The first part studies UML from an ontological perspective, attaches real- world semantics and derives ontologically grounded rules for applying UML to conceptual modelling. It is argued that by following these rules, modellers will improve the performance of the resultant models. In a second step, the derived rules and proposed advantages must be empirically supported. An experimental study is designed for this purpose.

Research efforts in Virtual Worlds domain have been mainly devoted to user interfaces, communication supports and consistency issues. To the best of our knowledge, no works clearly focused on the global problem of managing virtual world’s data. The promise of future large persistent virtual worlds, evolving during a long period of time and with large number of participants makes the question of data management even more crucial. This paper introduces the global problem of managing data in virtual worlds and reports our research work in using data management services for virtual worlds platforms.

This paper presents a thesis about a language and an execution model for the detection of situations aimed at reducing the complexity of active applications. This work has been motivated by the observation that in many cases, there is a gap between current tools that enable to react to a single event (following the ECA: Event – condition – action paradigm), and the reality, in which a single event may not require any reaction, however the reaction should be given to patterns over the event history. The concept of situation presented in this paper, extends the concept of composite event, in its expressive power, flexibility, and usability. This paper motivates the work, surveys other efforts in this are, and presents preliminary ideas for both the language and the execution model.

The Integration Rules (IRules) project at Arizona State University (http://www.eas.asu.edu/~irules) is developing a declarative event-based approach to component integration. Integration rules are based on the concept of active database rules, providing an active approach for specifying event- driven activity in a distributed environment. The IRules project consists of a knowledge model that specifies the IRules Definition Language and an execution model that supports integration rule execution. This research focuses on the execution model and the architectural design parts of the IRules project. The main objective of this research is to develop a distributed execution environment for using integration rules in the integration of black-box components. In particular, this research will investigate the design of an architecture that supports the IRules semantic framework, the development of an execution model for rule and transaction processing, and the design of a rule processing algorithm for coordinating the execution of integration rules. This research will combine the distributed computing framework of Jini, the asynchronous event notification mechanism of the Java Message Service (JMS), and the distributed blocking access functionality of JavaSpaces to support active rule processing in a distributed environment. The limitations of the underlying Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) component model pose transaction processing challenges for the integration process. This research will develop a suitable transaction model and processing logic to overcome the limitations of the underlying EJB component model. Furthermore, the architectural design will allow an easy extension of the system to accommodate other component models. This research is expected to contribute to nested rule and transaction processing for active rules that have not been previously addressed in distributed rule processing environments. The development of the IRules execution environment will also contribute to the use of distributed rule- based techniques for eventdriven component integration.

This extended abstract summarises the current state of a thesis project in information systems engineering. The overall problem is to support planning, coordination, management and performance of work in knowledge intensive projects. The approach is to apply interactive process models created and updated by the project participants, to customise and control the behaviour of the computerised support system. A number of new and existing modelling techniques are combined to solve the identified problems of modelling by end users and flexible model-driven computer support. Model reuse is a core challenge both for increasing the usefulness of the models and for minimising the effort of modelling. An innovative framework that supports need driven model reuse has been designed. The contributions of this thesis are validated through prototype implementation, comparison with related work, and user experimentation in case studies. Concrete problem formulation and a definite target audience are identified as the main shortcomings at the current stage of the work.

Although component-based platforms and technologies such as CORBA, COM+/.NET and Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) are now widely used for implementation and deployment of complex systems, the component way of thinking is still immature. Current CBD best practices, concepts, approaches and methods do not provide a full and consistent support for various component concepts, and therefore are not able to provide a full benefit of the CBD paradigm. This paper defines a new approach to components through an Integrated Component- Oriented Framework that provides a comprehensive component-oriented support for enterprise systems development. The framework enables that the same component way of thinking and the same consistent set of technology- independent component concepts can be applied in different aspects of enterprise systems development, from business services to distributed components.

The area of business process standardisation is a fairly new research area that has received much attention in recent years, both from the academic field, and from the practitioner field. One problem is that it is difficult for standards user organisations to determine that they have correctly interpreted and implemented a standard. Therefore, a certification instrument would help these organisations to achieve a more effective standardisation process, both with respect to time and effort required, and to the cost associated with implementing a standard. This is thus also the main problem covered by the thesis described in this paper. In order to provide an answer to this problem, five research questions have been identified that together can improve the situation. The intended result is a general certification instrument to be used in, or after, standards implementation. To our knowledge, no similar research projects are currently being undertaken, possibly because standardisation is such a new area of research. This research would therefore be a contribution to the research area as such.

The importance of improving the quality of decisions in organizations has been a subject for several years in computer, management and decision sciences. Some results were reached, but still a lot of questions remain open. From the perspective of computer science, systems like DSS, GDSS and ODSS are examples of those results. This research proposes another approach, which is based on the concept of a post-decision phase and the technological support that could bring contributions for the decisionmaking process. Through this technological support we aim that part of the process that takes place during a post- decision implementation can contribute to improve the quality of decisions made within an organization. Some innovative aspects include the timing where it is supposed to be used, i.e., after a decision is made and also, it considers news perspectives as a combination of a flexible workflow system integrated to a knowledge repository.

Even though discrete event simulation is seen as a powerful problem solving tool, day-today use is still neglected. We noticed that this is a result of (perceived) low effectiveness of simulation studies. As a solution to improve the effectiveness of simulation studies, we identified a possible improvement for simulation studies, simulation building blocks. In our first experiments using simulation building blocks to support simulation studies, we noticed improved effectiveness, although not every set of building blocks contributed to an improvement of the effectiveness. We blame the architecture used for the definition of the building blocks, for this lack of contribution. Based on these experiences, we identified requirements for a new and more generic architecture. We developed a new architecture consisting of model building blocks and building block elements of which we expect that building blocks that are constructed according to this architecture will lead to an improvement in the effectiveness of simulation studies. In this paper we sketch how we think this new architecture should be evaluated, using different case-studies, laboratory experiments and expert validations.

The goal of this paper is to give an overview of a thesis that focuses on the domain of e-business models and its application in Management Information Systems (MIS) and Requirements Engineering. The heart of the thesis is the development of an e-Business Model Ontology based on an extensive review of enterprise ontologies and business model literature. By merging the advantages of these two domains, one creates an appropriate basis for the development of a set of software prototypes that help managers understand, communicate and share, design and change e-business models. Further, such models that explain the e-business logic of a company would help IS designers better understand and implement e-business systems without reinventing strategy.

A modular or even component-based design is state-of-the-art in application development. But both object-relational database management systems and the object-relational standard SQL:1999 lack proper abilities supporting a modular schema design – the prerequisite for a component-based schema design. Nevertheless, the high effort required for an object-relational schema design strictly demands for a modular schema design. This paper describes the challenges of such a schema design and gives a vision of how a modular, object-relational schema design should look like.

In order to utilize the contemporary advanced technology, business processes need sound software support. With respect to this, one frequent cause of software project failure is the mismatch between the business requirements and the actual functionality of the delivered software application. To solve this problem, it is necessary to build software stemming out from a business process model. Aiming at aligning business process modeling and software design in a component-based way, the proposed research investigates the identification of generic business engineering building blocks and their use for building ICT applications which effectively support business processes.

Successful change from a brick-and-mortar firm to a click-and-mortar organization depends on simultaneous analysis and change in all its major elements. The human element is a major element and yet neglected by organisational change methodologies. Especially the `Context’ comprising of deeply imbedded business models and mindsets are not captured by process methodologies of transformational change. The research question is ‘How can most of the information related to the context of the business processes, mainly the human context, be systematically captured and integrated with the business processes?’ To answer the question, the researcher developed an Object Oriented approach to organisational understanding, based on Richard Watson’s (1999) work on strategy for Internet organizations. The approach captures not only the processes, but also the attitudes, mindsets, behavioral patterns of people running those processes and their surrounding context. The interplay between them is captured through `causal patterns’ that are often at the root of organisational success or failure. Causal patterns are sustained patterns of behavior in an organisation, formed when behavioral patterns interact with each other. The OO approach adduced effectively captures, models and analyzes the phenomenon. The OO approach was validated by applying it to an organisation. Case study research methodology was used. Research results indicate that 5 years back causal patterns led to good market reputation with loyalty of customers, suppliers and employees. Over time the business processes remained unchanged but the context changed, turning virtuous causal patterns into vicious. Reengineering would have failed, as the problem did not originate in business processes. The OO approach neatly captured the phenomenon. The research implies 1] revision in change methodologies. 2] OO can be used to model Internet organizations, their strategies and internal operations simultaneously, increasing probability of successful transition to e-business 3] lead to realistic simulation of any organisation. 4] give directions to identify process granularity, help ERP implementation.