Service-Oriented Foundation and Analysis Patterns for Conceptual Model-ling of Information Systems

Abstract

Everyday companies are inventing new configurations of service architectures, which prescribe and motivate information system design. Information system architectures are intrinsically complex engineering products that can be defined on different levels of abstraction and represented by using various dimensions. Designers are building them fragment by fragment, but when the design is complete, typically the business and technical components do not fit each other. The attempt to maintain the relevance of each specification fragment across disparate dimensions is very expensive and time consuming. The notion of service is not used explicitly in traditional information system engineering methods, which cover just a part of required modelling notations that are currently emerging under the service-oriented analysis and design approaches. The most fascinating idea about the service concept is that it applies equally well to organisational as well as technical components, which can be viewed as service requestors and service providers. The primary goal of service-oriented architecture is to align the business process models with the information system design in order to make both organisational and technical system parts more effective. One of the reasons why the traditional methods do not provide effective support for engineering of information systems is that service architectures are difficult to visualise and comprehend for business experts who determine the organisational strategies. The main goal of this chapter is to present a new service-oriented foundation and the associated analysis patterns for computation neutral information system modelling. A service concept integrates various information system dimensions of static and dynamic aspects into one modelling notation.