Frantisek Hunka

Detailed Analysis of REA Ontology

The paper addresses REA (Resource-Event-Agent) domain specific ontology that is primarily focused on value modeling in business processes. REA ontology which historically originates from accounting information systems, gradually developed to cover all areas where value modeling can be utilized. After a short introduction, a core REA pattern is introduced and analyzed from the view of its basic entities and the relationships between them. Next, additional crucial concepts of REA ontology and their relationships are gradually elucidated and analyzed from the view of DEMO (Design & Engineering Methodology for Organizations). The paper also describes the current definition of economic transaction that is used as a basis for REA state machine. The discussion and conclusion sections summarize and assess the pros and cons of REA ontology and propose a way forward for further research.

CEM: Class executing modelling

Abstract This paper analysis approaches and possibilities of executive model aimed to MDA approach. The second part of the article proposes guideline to create executive model and describes basic interactions to object oriented approach. Annotations have been used for executive model object extension. Reflection concept has been used for model execution. Proposed model supports new type of extended object with enhanced metadata model as well as regular objects with no additional metadata description. According to use object with no additional description the model supports third-part components and supports reusability. The model will be applied to LFLC package developed by Institute for Research and Applications of Fuzzy Modeling, University of Ostrava.

Detail REA production planning model using value chain

Abstract REA (resource-event-agent) is an ontology based on the value oriented perspective of resources, utilized in business process modeling. The value chain model is a network of business processes that are bound by the inflows and outflows of resources, the result of which provides an overview of the business processes of a particular enterprise and validates the consistency of the whole model. The fact that resources can only flow among business processes considerably restricts activities such as planning, controlling and monitoring. The paper designs advancement how to adopt the REA value chain model in order to effectively comprise the flows of entities between two neighboring REA process models at both operational and policy levels.

Towards Co-creation and Co-production in Production Chains Modeled in DEMO with REA Support

Co-creation and Co-production in production chains is the typical way of cooperation one observes in high value industrial production chains. The enterprises in these production chains constitute together also a sophisticated virtual enterprise. While many professional IT systems are operational within these enterprises, there are only IT technologies with a limited scope at a small scale available between these enterprises. The new technologies currently provided by enterprise engineering promise substantial operational improvements; operational control, compliance to business rules, optimization of efficiency and effectiveness. Another objective is support for the REA ontology for high quality financial information systems, which requires a conceptual mapping between REA and DEMO to be found. The first step, a generic DEMO model for co-creation and co-production, has been devised and subjected to early validation. This paper is also a positioning paper, defining future research, specifies two challenges for the DEMO theory and provides foundations for a professional production system.

The REA Model Expressed in a Generic DEMO Model for Co-creation and Co-production

The REA ontology is a domain ontology that aims to support accounting information systems that must provide a truthful and appropriate – GAAP compliant - descriptive perspective of an enterprise in operation. While the application of a domain ontology provides strong benefits, the current representation of the REA model does not provide the desired results; an appropriate working accounting system. One of the root causes of this problem is the lack of a proper formal representation of the REA model. In this paper the DEMO methodology is applied to provide a generic domain and application-independent DEMO model (the CC-CP model) for co-creation and co-production in any industrial production chain. This model appears to be also appropriate to capture any interaction between an enterprise and any external parties, stakeholders, customers, suppliers, personnel etc., and support accounting systems. This approach offers several new advantages, notably: (i) prescriptive workflow-like operation of the enterprise with full transaction driven execution; (ii) process-mining (-like) analysis of daily operation; (iii) ontological completeness of factual knowledge as required not only for accounting systems but also for other descriptive information systems and (iv) completeness of implementation for any kind of business interactions between enterprises.

Applying ETL fuzzy filter for data warehouse size minimization

The paper proposes a new approach of data warehouse minimization by fuzzy-based ETL filter for ETL processes in business intelligence (BI) systems and discusses possibilities to tune up the process. First part introduces common company systems and possible data sources in the company. Second part states the problem with interpreting information in BI systems and explains a data representation in the BI systems. Third part of the paper defines a rule base and input and output values of the expert system. Last part of the paper proposes a two ways to minimize a data - modification border of the fuzzy set and omitting useless combinations of the linguistic variables and modifiers.

Modeling the Value Chain with Object-Valued Petri Nets

A substantial part of the economic theories is based on conversion and exchange process. These processes can be arranged in a value chain, which can be considered as a cyclic model with complex attributes. There is a serious problem how to express resources and their conversions in a complex cyclic model during the simulation and how to identify these converted resources in every step of the simulation. This paper introduces the Object- valued Petri (OV-PN) modification as a new formalism to create a cyclic model of the value chain. According to the modification we had to define a new path and pass of the OV-PN. We also had to determine new properties. Properties are based on the OV-PN and reflect needs of model requirements. A new formalism is verified on a common enterprise value chain.

Reusable Object-Oriented Model

This paper analysis approaches and possibilities of executive model aimed to MDA approach. The second part of the article proposes guideline to create executive model, describes basic interactions to object oriented approach and shows possibilities of creating a core of executable model in Java programming language. Annotations are used for executive model object extension. Reflection concept is used for model execution and synchronization provides extended Petri net formalism defined in [1]. The model has been tested on LFLC software package developed by IRAFM, University of Ostrava to prove the whole concept.

Enterprise Ontology-Driven Development

Most of the current techniques and approaches for user requirements specification have problems with capturing the appropriate context for development of enterprise information systems. Primarily, they are designed to capture the functional aspects of software rather than its relevancy to an enterprise. Transactions defined in the DEMO (Design & Engineering Methodology for Organizations) represent business activities in their existential essence without implementation details. Therefore, they are great candidates to be utilized for the initial development phase of enterprise information systems. The paper exemplifies how to specify software specification the using the DEMO transaction pattern and BDD (Behaviour-Driven Development) technique. This proposal resulted from a significant lack of direct utilization of ontology for enterprise information systems development. The major part of the paper gives a step-by-step explanation of how to integrate DEMO transaction patterns into initial BDD scenarios for the development of enterprise information systems. Such created scenarios provide a perfect guideline in the initial phase of information system development for enterprises. The created scenarios were verified using the domain specific language Gherkin and BDD framework Behat.

The DEMO Co-creation and Co-production Model and Its Utilization

Co-creation and Co-production in production chains is the typical way of cooperation one observes in high value industrial production chains. The DEMO (Design Engineering Methodology for Organization) co-creation and co-production (CC-CP) model is based on the DEMO methodology and the DEMO Enterprise Ontology. This model enables modeling paired transactions applications. The paired transactions mean that the core of the application is formed by two different kinds of transactions, where one kind of transactions is in consideration of the other kind of transactions. This is the fundamental aspect of e.g. accountancy systems, or various applications that utilize a contract. The paper describes and explains the main features of this model and then shows the model’s application on a Rent-A-Car example. This is an example in which service (services) is exchanged for money. The paper also discusses various possibilities that the DEMO CC-CP model provides to properly capture modeling reality, and also mentions future research in this area.