Evolving information systems: meeting the ever‐changing environment

Abstract. To meet the demands of organizations and their ever‐changing environment, information systems are required which are able to evolve to the same extent as organizations do. Such a system has to support changes in all time‐and application‐dependent aspects. In this paper, requirements and a conceptual framework for evolving information systems are presented. This framework includes an architecture for such systems and a revision of the traditional notion of update. Based on this evolutionary notion of update (recording, correction and forgetting) a state transition‐oriented model on three levels of abstraction (event level, recording level, correction level) is introduced. Examples are provided to illustrate the conceptual framework for evolving information systems