Conceptual Modeling for Novel Application Domains

Business systems these days need to be agile to address the needs of a changing world. In particular the discipline of Enterprise Application Integration requires business process management to be highly reconfigurable with the ability to support dynamic workflows, inter-application integration and process reconfiguration. Basing EAI systems on model-resident or on a socalled description-driven approach enables aspects of flexibility, distribution, system evolution and integration to be addressed in a domain-independent manner. Such a system called CRISTAL is described in this paper with particular emphasis on its application to EAI problem domains. A practical example of the CRISTAL technology in the domain of manufacturing systems, called Agilium, is described to demonstrate the principles of model-driven system evolution and integration. The approach is compared to other modeldriven development approaches such as the Model-Driven Architecture of the OMG and so-called Adaptive Object Models. 1 Background and Related Works As the global marketplace becomes increasingly complex and intricately connected, organizations are constantly pressured to re-organize, re-structure, diversify, consolidate and slim down to provide a winning competitive edge. With the advent of the Internet and e-commerce, the need for coexistence and interoperation with legacy systems and for reduced ’times-to-market’, the demand for the timely delivery of flexible software has increased. Couple to this the increasing complexity of systems and the requirement for systems to evolve over potentially extended timescales and the importance of clearly defined, extensible models as the basis of rapid systems design becomes a pre-requisite to successful systems implementation. One of the main drivers in the object-oriented design of information systems is the need for the reuse of design artefacts or models in handling systems evolution. To be able to cope with system volatility, systems must have the capability of reuse and to adapt as and when necessary to changes in requirements. The philosophy that has been investigated in the research reported in this paper is based on the systematic

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