Situation-based Approach for E-Business Functional Modeling

Several reference models have been developed for e-business systems. In spite of their differences the deep structure underlying them is identified with its three layers, namely, business, functional and resource layers. However, despite the importance of the functional layer little attention has been paid to the problem of which proper conceptual construct can be used for modeling it. Viewing e-business as a semiotic phenomenon, in which all the interactions among the involving parties aim at changing the state of an e-thing in both its visibility state space and its lifetime state space, the concepts of the “semiotic communicative situation” is introduced as the required modeling construct. It is defined as a dynamic construct that is composed of collection of interacting actors that are configured and re-configured to actualize certain semiotic actions that affect the states of e-things (e.g., e-order). The application of the proposed conceptual construct is illustrated by using it to build a simple functional model for an e-broker. The implications of the proposed conceptual construct are discussed.