Moving the Work System Theory Forward

Alter (2013) proposes the work system theory (WST) as the transformation of previously developed information system (IS) artifacts: the work system method (WSM), the work system framework, and the work system life cycle (WSLC). This transformation of IS artifacts into theory suggests a new set of questions regarding how we conceptualize theory and how it relates to the evaluation of IS artifacts. We conclude that such a transformation can benefit the information systems field if it enables the codification of generalized propositions that can be tested in realistic settings. Indeed, we suggest that this should be the ultimate goal of the construction of methodological IS artifacts such as those underlying the work system approach

Developing Internet Agents: A Tutorial Using Visual Basic 6.0

An agent is someone or something authorized to “act on behalf of” another person. In professional sports, for example, an athlete’s agent may be authorized to negotiate the athlete’s contract, but may or may not be authorized to accept the terms of a contract. Similarly, an Internet agent acts on behalf of a person who wishes to conduct some activity utilizing the Internet. The capabilities and authority invested in such an agent are at the discretion of the person it represents. Typically Internet agents perform search and data collection activities. They may or may not have authority to negotiate or conduct purchase or sale transactions. Internet agents have varying levels of sophistication including lifespan, error detection and recovery, data validation, and embedded intelligence (Kauffman et al. 1999). A simple Internet agent, for example, may contact a single Web site (e.g., Amazon.com), extract a single fact (e.g., the price of a specified book) and report that fact to the user. A more sophisticated Internet agent may contact multiple Web sites (e.g., Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com), track facts for several days or weeks (e.g., prices of a basket of books), record those facts for later analysis (e.g., in a database), and conduct transactions (e.g., purchase a subset of the basket of books when prices and availability meet given criteria). Today’s component-based, rapid application development environments allow individuals with very limited programming experience to build relatively sophisticated Internet agents without lengthy courses in Internet protocols or advanced programming techniques. Using development environments such as Visual Basic 6.0, simple but non-trivial Internet agents can be specified using a handful of components and a few dozen lines of code. The following sections present a single example illustrating the most rudimentary capabilities needed to create an Internet agent. This agent merely retrieves the raw HTML from a specified URL. A more complete tutorial, available at http://www.internet- technology.org/tutorials/agents/visualbasic/march includes examples of more sophisticated agents having more useful capabilities. These include following links, extracting and interpreting the data, and storing that data in a database for later analysis

The “Theoretical Lens” Concept: We All Know What it Means, but do We All Know the Same Thing?

The term theoretical lens has grown in usage in business and social science research and particularly in the information systems (IS) discipline. In this paper, we question what the term really means by examining it on several dimensions in the context of its actual use. In particular, we consider 1) where the term appears in each paper, 2) how many conceptualizations of theoretical lens each paper uses, 3) the research method the paper uses, 4) the IS domain the paper considers, and 5) which underlying conceptualizations the paper actually uses. To do so, we examine the full set of actual uses in the IS journal that uses the term most frequently, the European Journal of Information Systems. We conclude by discussing several further questions that these observations raise, which suggest deeper issues about better and less advantageous uses of theoretical lenses in IS research and what these issues might imply for the IS discipline

Editorial Statement: Information Technology and Systems (ITS) Department

This paper introduces the Information and Technology Systems (ITS) Department of CAIS. The department focuses on articles in design science. The goal of design-science research is the development and evaluation of technologies that extend the boundaries of human and organizational information-processing capabilities. Research must demonstrate the utility of such technologies to address problems or tasks not previously thought to be amenable to IT support. The article presents the objectives, concepts, and publication procedures for the ITS Department

Toward a Social Ontology for Conceptual Modeling

Conceptual modeling is fundamental to information systems requirements engineering. Systems analysts and designers use the constructs and methods of a conceptual modeling formalism to represent, communicate, and validate the contents, capabilities, and constraints of an envisioned information system within its organizational context. The value of such a representation is measured by the degree to which it facilitates a shared understanding among all stakeholders of (1) the organizational information requirements and (2) the ability of the envisioned information system to meet them [Wand and Weber, 2002]. We propose using the social ontology developed by John Searle [1995, 2006, 2010] as the basis for conceptual modeling and present a meta-model based on that ontology

The Effects of Parallel Processing on Update Response Time in Distributed Database Design

Network latency and local update are the most significant components of update response time in a distributed database system. Effectively designed distributed database systems can take advantage of parallel processing to minimize this time. We present a design approach to response time minimization for update transactions in a distributed database. Response time is calculated as the sum of local processing and communication, including transmit time, queuing delays, and network latency. We demonstrate that parallelism has significant impacts on the efficiency of data allocation strategies in the design of high transaction-volume distributed databases

Information Technology and Organizational Contexts: Orienting Our Work Along Key Dimensions

The locus of the Information Systems discipline is at the intersection of organizations, people, and those technologies and systems specifically related to the acquisition, storage, analysis, interpretation, and communication of data. However, much of the published research is trifurcated, emphasizing one dimension and virtually ignoring the others. We argue that a deeper understanding of and an appropriate emphasis on the technological dimension, the information technology artifact, will significantly benefit research in the discipline. By doing this in a manner that explicitly recognizes the organizational and human contexts, we will better orient our work toward the needs of our various constituencies. We look at two specific examples of potentially rich areas of enquiry: workflow management and the semantic Web. Using a design science paradigm, we describe how these two can serve as exemplars to address the key research concerns of the discipline. We conclude by discussing the roles that authors, journals, and the discipline itself can play in addressing the challenges that are presented

On the Role of Context and Subjectivity on Scientific Information Systems

The explicit representation of context and subjectivity enables an information system to support multiple interpretations of the data it records. This is a crucial aspect of learning and innovation within scientific information systems. We present an ontology-based framework for context and subjectivity that integrates two lines of research: data provenance and ontological foundations of the Semantic Web. Data provenance provides a set of constructs for representing data history. We extend the definition of these constructs in order to describe multiple viewpoints or interpretations held within a domain. The W7 model, the Toulmin model, and the Proof Markup Language (PML) provide the Interlingua for creating multiple viewpoints of data in a machine-readable and sharable form. Example use cases in space sciences are used to demonstrate the feasibility and value of our approach

Object-Oriented Development: Patterns, Interfaces, and Update Semantics

Object-Orientation has the potential to significantly improve information system development productivity through the reuse of code and design components. To achieve this potential, object patterns having similar update semantics must be recognized and standard interfaces developed for them. We propose six such patterns and demonstrate their benefits by developing standard interface templates for each. A developer can analyze the patterns in an object model and quickly configure interfaces and update methods for an information system using these templates. These templates are implemented as meta-classes in Smalltalk as part of SOODAS, a Semantic Object-Oriented Data Access System, which also supports Entity-Relationship semantics and provides a set-level query language