Modeling information systems from the viewpoint of active documents
Bálint Molnár, András Benczúr · Vietnam Journal of Computer Science · 2015
The development of document handling by organizations at the level of business processes and business information systems leads to the phenomenon that the majority of documents and their contents remain in semi-structured format and definite minorities of documents are directly mapped onto structured databases. The rapidly evolving technology on the database field provides the opportunity to manage directly the semi-structured documents in line with the requirements of business processes. A continuum of possible document formats may exist in business environments. The documents can be categorized by the organization of the underlying data collections and according to the necessity and capability of data included in documents as whether wholly or partially is to be structured. The most modern database technology yields tools for handling and retrieving data making use of semi-structured and unstructured data. Our proposed approach (1) on one hand provides a theoretical framework for modeling IS to shape into some structure, (2) on the other hand yields guidance for design method to employ it for practical application with the extension of specific elementary models. The proposed modeling method that places the emphasis onto the documents and their symbiotic life with processes helps in understanding the behavior of most modern information systems. As a result, the combination of document-centric modeling and the enterprise architecture approach gives an opportunity for a unified modeling approach that keeps an eye on Conway’s thesis that states that software architecture congruent with the structure of development team, and this statement may be paraphrased that the overall document structure may reflect the structure of the specific organization.