A Suite of Modelling Tools for Developing Cyber-Physical Systems and Digital Twins Implementations

This paper reports on the integration between IoT and business process management, in order to help organisations implement Digital Twins more easily, thus achieving new levels of agility and developing higher quality data streams. The work was mapped on the Digital Engineer framework, highlighting the contributions made towards bridging the gap between process design in digital environments and process enactment in the real world. Moreover, we are also describing some research directions that would lead to a stronger coupling between digital and physical environments, leveraging the benefits of conceptual modelling

EMBRACING CONCEPTUAL MODELLING TO ENABLE THE MEDIATION ROLE OF ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Nowadays, digital environments are getting a more important role than ever in shaping the way in which enterprise operations are conducted and enterprises are being developed. Traditional information systems (IS) used by enterprises need to evolve in order to accommodate the shift of their role from representation to mediation, role that has been recently conceptualized but not sufficiently researched to identify means that enable its operationalization across domains and purposes. This work identifies what are the key enablers and how should these be applied regardless of the domain of interest. For this, our paper showcases the development of a new enterprise system that serves as a proof-of concept artifact that operationalizes the before mentioned new role of the IS. Our proposal relies on Conceptual Modelling together with all the other related enablers like Digital Twins, metamodeling platforms or model-driven operation. In this way, we want to highlight the benefits of Conceptual Modelling in providing a new abstractization layer between the digital and the physical worlds, supporting roundtrip engineering capabilities. Our example concerns the modern organization that continuously aims to become more innovative and gain competitive advantage therefore, it employs smart devices like drones in different business operations

Towards a Modeling Method for Managing Node.js Projects and Dependencies

This paper proposes a domain-specific and technology-specific modeling method for managing Node.js projects. It addresses the challenge of managing dependencies in the NPM and REST ecosystems, while also providing a specialized workflow model type as a process-centric view on a software project. With the continuous growth of the Node.js environment, managing complex projects that use this technology can be chaotic, especially when it comes to planning dependencies and module integration. The deprecation of a module can lead to serious crisis regarding the projects where that module was used; consequently, traceability of deprecation propagation becomes a key requirements in Node.js project management. The modeling method introduced in this paper provides a diagrammatic solution to managing module and API dependencies in a Node.js project. It is deployed as a modeling tool that can also generate REST API documentation and Node.js project configuration files that can be executed to install the graphically designed dependencies

A Metamodeling Approach to Teaching Conceptual Modeling at Large

In the authors\u27 university there is a challenge, with respect to Conceptual Modeling topics, of bridging the gap between bachelor-level studies and research work. At bachelor-level, Conceptual Modeling is subordinated to Software Engineering topics consequently making extensive use of software design standards. However, at doctoral level or in project-based work, modeling methods must be scientifically framed within wider-scoped paradigms - Design Science, Enterprise Modeling etc. In order to bridge this gap, we developed a teaching artifact to present Conceptual Modeling as a standalone discipline that can produce its own artifacts, driven by requirements in a variety of domains. The teaching artifact is an agile modeling method that is iteratively implemented by students. The key takeaway revelation for students is that a modeling language is a knowledge schema that can be tailored and migrated for specific purposes just like a database schema, to accommodate an application domain and its modeling requirements

From the Application-Centric to the Knowledge-Centric University: A Design Science Proof-of-Concept

The paper reports on early stages of a Design Science research project where a Knowledge Graph strategy is adopted in order to increase the value of data being managed by a higher education institution. Legacy IT systems have been developed in the investigated institution over more than 20 years, leading to data silos that require heavy synchronization jobs. These had to be automated with significant effort and are scheduled on a daily basis in order to resolve synchronizations and conflicts between conceptually overlapping SQL databases that are hosted on different servers from different vendors, each serving a different application. An initial proof-of-concept based on a Knowledge Graph strategy is being iteratively developed as part of an institutional project in order to satisfy novel analysis scenarios that are not well supported by the As-Is, app-centric, data silo architecture. Design decisions to enable the new analysis scenarios are hereby presented within the frame of Design Science research

Data Federation for a Project Management Solution through a GraphQL Middleware

Data integration has been under research from the early stages of data management solutions, but it becomes subject to more intense scrutiny with the expanding opportunities opened by Web interoperability technologies. In distributed environments, there are many scenarios in which data from different sources must be accessed through a joint approach, overcoming heterogeneity of data location and format. This paper reports on design decisions with a GraphQL middleware to enable consistent access and delivery of data spanning over heterogeneous sources, in a project management context. Compared to other service-based architectures employing a REST-based API, a GraphQL solution mitigates issues such as overfetching or underfetching when retrieving data in a client application. As proof-of-concept, a prototype of a project management module in an academic management system was implemented to integrate data entities available in legacy data sources

Conceptual Modeling Education as a “Design Problem”

This article frames Conceptual Modeling education as a design problem, in the sense of the Design Science research framework, motivated by student preconceptions and oversimplifications causing a gap between how the discipline is perceived at the bachelor level and the holistic understanding of model value that is required for research work. The treatment to this design problem must comprise teaching approaches and artifacts capable of positioning Conceptual Modeling as a standalone discipline having a value proposition for any application domain, rather than a technique subordinated to other disciplines. The underpinning thesis is that modeling languages should be primarily understood as purposeful knowledge schemas that can be subjected to agile adaptations in support of model-driven systems or knowledge processes, by analogy to how a database schema is evolved in response to changing requirements of a data-driven system or data analytics needs. This thesis is supported by enablers provided by the Open Models Laboratory and the Agile Modeling Method Engineering framework – resources that support the development of treatments to the design problem framed by the article