The impact of architectural decisions on quality attributes of enterprise information systems: a survey of the design space

Design of enterprise information systems is a problem-solving activity. A system architect, designer and programmer make numerous decisions about the structure and behaviour of the system on various levels. These decisions define the quality of the system under design (SuD) in all its aspects. An example of an application-level decision is whether to structure the domain logic according to a domain model, a table module or a transaction script. We want to investigate the effects of such decisions on quality attributes of software. This will allow us to make better software and to predict the quality of software before it is built. In this research, we try to empirically validate or reject hypotheses like: ¿In the majority of systems above 500 function points, systems with a domain model have better changeability than systems with a table module.¿ If the validity of such hypotheses depend on the context of the system, we want to know in which cases the hypotheses hold and in which they do not. To be able to do such empirical research, we first need to develop a theoretical framework that defines the research context. This framework defines concepts like design problems, options and quality indicators. The design problems and options define choices a systems designer makes when designing a system. The quality indicators define if an option is better than another option: the notion of ¿better¿ is operationalized by means of quality indicators. The three together form the design space. Other design space models are discussed in section 4. The goal of this paper is to present a design space as a framework for empirical research

Requirements for a quality measurement instrument for semantic standards

This study describes requirements for an instrument to measure the quality of semantic standards. A situational requirements engineering method was used, resulting in a goal-tree in which requirements are structured. This structure shows requirements related to the input of the instrument; stating that the instrument should be useful for a set of different semantic standards. It also shows that the instrument should be efficient and especially easy to use. Finally there a set of requirements related to the outcome of the instrument, stressing that a high quality outcome is important, including improvement suggestions. Based on this set of requirements a foundation for the design phase has been created

Linked Data for Transaction Based Enterprise Interoperability

Part 2: Short and Position PapersInternational audienceInteroperability is of major importance in B2B environments. Starting with EDI in the ‘80s, currently interoperability relies heavily on XML-based standards. Although having great impact, still issues remain to be solved for improving B2B interoperability. These issues include lack of dynamics, cost of implementations, adoption and cross-industry exchange. Linked Data (part of the Semantic Web) technology, although originally not intended for the B2B domain, holds the promise of overcoming some of these issues.This paper explores the potential of linked data technology within a B2B context by introducing and studying six scenarios for combining from light to heavy weight ‘traditional’ standards with Linked Data technology.This research shows that using Linked Data technology has most potential for specifying semantics formally. This provides the ‘best of both worlds’ solution, in which legacy systems remain unaltered, and developers are supported in (semi) automated generation of transformation schema’s to overcome different standards

Requirements for a quality measurement instrument for semantic standards

This study describes requirements for an instrument to measure the quality of semantic standards. A situational requirements engineering method was used, resulting in a goal-tree in which requirements are structured. This structure shows requirements related to the input of the instrument; stating that the instrument should be useful for a set of different semantic standards. It also shows that the instrument should be efficient and especially easy to use. Finally there a set of requirements related to the outcome of the instrument, stressing that a high quality outcome is important, including improvement suggestions. Based on this set of requirements a foundation for the design phase has been create