Consistency in Multi-Viewpoint Architectural Design of Enterprise Information Systems

Different stakeholders in the design of an enterprise information system have their own view on that design. To help produce a coherent design this paper presents a framework that aids in specifying relations between such views. To help produce a consistent design the framework also aids in specifying consistency rules that apply to the view relations and in checking the consistency according to those rules. The framework focuses on the higher levels of abstraction in a design, we refer to design at those levels of abstraction as architectural design. The highest level of abstraction that we consider is that of business process design and the lowest level is that of software component design. The contribution of our framework is that it provides a collection of basic concepts that is common to viewpoints in the area of enterprise information systems. These basic concepts aid in relating viewpoints by providing: (i) a common terminology that helps stakeholders to understand each others concepts; and (ii) a basis for defining re-usable consistency rules. In particular we define re-usable rules to check consistency between behavioural views that overlap or are a refinement of each other. We also present an architecture for a tool suite that supports our framework. We show that our framework can be applied, by performing a case study in which we specify the relations and consistency rules between the RM-ODP enterprise, computational and information viewpoints

Semantic verification of Behavior Conformance

This paper introduces a formal yet practical method to verify whether the behavior design of a distributed application conforms to the behavior design of the enterprise in which the application is embedded. The method allows both enterprise architects and application architects to talk about designs in their own terms, and introduces a common set of terms as the linking pin between enterprise and application designs. The formal semantics of these common terms allows us to verify the conformance between an enterprise and its applications formally and automatically

A Rigorous Approach to Relate Enterprise and Computational Viewpoints

Multiviewpoint approaches allow stakeholders to design a system from stakeholder-specific viewpoints. By this, a separation of concerns is achieved, which makes designs more manageable. However, to construct a consistent multiviewpoint design, the relations between viewpoints must be defined precisely, so that the consistency of designs from these viewpoints can be verified. The goal of this paper is to make the consistency rules between (a slightly adapted version of) the RM-ODP enterprise and computational viewpoints more precise and to make checking the consistency between these viewpoints practically applicable. To achieve this goal, we apply a generic framework for relating viewpoints that includes reusable consistency rules. We implemented the consistency rules in a tool to show their applicability

An Approach to Relate Viewpoints and Modeling Languages

The architectural design of distributed enterprise applications from the viewpoints of different stakeholders has been proposed for some time, for example, as part of RM-ODP and IEEE 1471, and seems now-a-days to gain acceptance in practice. However, much work remains to be done on the relationships between different viewpoints. Failing to relate viewpoints may lead to a collection of viewpoint models that is inconsistent, and may therefore lead to an incorrect implementation. This paper defines an approach that helps designers to relate different viewpoints to each other. Thereby, it helps to enforce the consistency of the overall design. The results of this paper are expected to be particularly interesting for Model Driven Architecture (MDA) projects, since the proposed models can be used for the explicit definition of the models and relationships between models in an MDA trajectory

A design-for-change approach: developing distributed applications from enterprise models

This paper presents a novel approach to distributed applications design. The proposed approach considers both the enterprise viewpoint and the computational\ud viewpoint of distributed applications during the design process. Two important benefits are thus accomplished: (1) the resulting distributed applications will better match the enterprise’s needs, and (2) changes in the enterprise can easily be translated to changes in the distributed application. The approach comes with a formal notation that makes it possible to define a precise relation between enterprise models and models of the distributed applications

Measuring similarity between business process models

Quality aspects become increasingly important when business process modeling is used in a large-scale enterprise setting. In order to facilitate a storage without redundancy and an efficient retrieval of relevant process models in model databases it is required to develop a theoretical understanding of how a degree of behavioral similarity can be defined. In this paper we address this challenge in a novel way. We use causal footprints as an abstract representation of the behavior captured by a process model, since they allow us to compare models defined in both formal modeling languages like Petri nets and informal ones like EPCs. Based on the causal footprint derived from two models we calculate their similarity based on the established vector space model from information retrieval.We validate this concept with an experiment using the SAP Reference Model and an implementation in the ProM framework

Clinical experience with an epoxy resin adhesive for direct bonding of orthodontic attachments*

KIMAn epoxy resin formulation developed in the Dental Research Unit has been subjected to further clinical trials. Six patients, were used in the study. They were divided into two age groups and all the teeth, including the first molars, bonded. Rubber dam was used to keep the crowns dry during the setting period of the resin. In the younger group the mean failure rates were 27 per cent for anterior teeth and 70 per cent for the first molars. In the older group these rates were 11 per cent for incisors, 11 per cent for canines, 20 per cent for premolars and 20 per cent for first molars. While no figures are available in the literature relating to direct bonding to first molars, the results obtained in this study for the other teeth compare favourably with data previously published by other authors after trials using other types of cement

Similarity of business process models : metrics and evaluation

It is common for large and complex organizations to maintain repositories of business process models in order to document and to continuously improve their operations. Given such a repository, this paper deals with the problem of retrieving those process models in the repository that most closely resemble a given process model or fragment thereof. The paper presents three similarity metrics that can be used to answer such queries: (i) label matching similarity that compares the labels attached to process model elements; (ii) structural similarity that compares element labels as well as the topology of process models; and (iii) behavioral similarity that compares element labels as well as causal relations captured in the process model. These similarity metrics are experimentally evaluated in terms of precision and recall, and in terms of correlation of the metrics with respect to human judgement. The experimental results show that all three metrics yield comparable results, with structural similarity slightly outperforming the other two metrics. Also, all three metrics outperform traditional search engines when it comes to searching through a repository for similar business process models