Conceptual Modeling Method for Separation of Concerns and Integration of Structure and Behavior

Identification of discontinuities, separation of concerns, and dealing with the evolutionary changes of requirements is difficult in conceptual modeling. The limited human mind allows focusing on one particular requirement at a time in isolation. One fundamental problem is that all conventional conceptual modeling techniques deal with collections of loosely linked meta-models, which are defined by different types of diagrams. Typically, system development methods project interactive, behavioral, and structural aspects of information systems' conceptual representations into disparate views. Therefore, the semantic integrity of various architecture dimensions is difficult to achieve. The difficulties stem from the paradigmatic mismatch between static and dynamic constructs. The advantage of the conceptual modeling approach presented in this paper is flexibility. It is demonstrated by case study examples that sequential, underlying, enclosing, overriding, and overlaying interaction loops between actors provide the foundation for the composition of complex scenarios, which span across organizational and technical system boundaries. The presented semantic integration and system decomposition principles target business process modeling experts and information system designers, because they are essential for introducing evolutionary changes and managing complexity of information system conceptualizations.