Nicolas Arni-Bloch

A knowledge-based approach to manage information systems interoperability

Interoperability is a key property of enterprise applications, which is hard to achieve due to the large number of interoperating components and semantic heterogeneity. The inherent complexity of interoperability problems implies that there exists no silver bullet to solve them. Rather, the knowledge about how to solve wicked interoperability problems is hidden in the application cases that expose those problems. The paper addresses the question of how to organise and use method knowledge to resolve interoperability problems. We propose the structure of a knowledge-based system that can deliver situation-specific solutions, called method chunks. Situational Method Engineering promotes modularisation and formalisation of method knowledge in the form of reusable method chunks, which can be combined to compose a situation-specific method. The method chunks are stored in a method chunk repository. In order to cater for management and retrieval, we introduce an Interoperability Classification Framework, which is used to classify and tag method chunks and to assess the project situation in which they are to be used. The classification framework incorporates technical as well as business and organisational aspects of interoperability. This is an important feature as interoperability problems typically are multifaceted spanning multiple aspects. We have applied the approach to analyse an industry case from the insurance sector to identify and classify a set of method chunks.

MISS: A Metamodel of Information System Service

Integration of different components that compose enterprise information systems (IS) represents a big challenge in the IS development. However, this integration is indispensable in order to avoid IS fragmentation and redundancy between different IS applications. In this work we apply service-oriented development principles to information systems. We define the concept of information system service (ISS) and propose a metamodel of ISS (MISS). We claim that it is not sufficient to consider an ISS as a black box and it is essential to include in the ISS specification the information about service structure, processes and rules shared with other services and thus to make the service transparent. Therefore we define the MISS using three informational spaces (static, dynamic and rule).

Service-Driven Information Systems Evolution: Handling Integrity Constraints Consistency

Changes and extensions of enterprise information systems (IS) often engender their fragmentation and redundancy. In order to overcome these problems, service-driven IS development is considered as a potential solution to support IS evolution when guaranteeing its integrity and consistency. In this work we consider the integration of new information system services (ISS) into a legacy IS and, in particular, how the consistency of integrity constraints (IC) governing the IS and the new ISS has to be handled in order to guarantee their validation. Five IC handling strategies are proposed in the form of method chunks and the impact of their application is measured with four service evolution indicators.

Service-Oriented Information Systems Engineering: A Situation-Driven Approach for Service Integration

In this work we propose a Metamodel of Information System Service (MISS) and introduce a situation-driven approach for ISS integration. This approach is based on situational method engineering principals and is defined as a collection of inter-related method chunks.

An interoperability classification framework for method chunk repositories

The competitiveness and efficiency of an enterprise is dependent on its ability to interact with other enterprises and organisations. In this context interoperability is defined as the ability of business processes as well as enterprise software and applications to interact. Interoperability remains a problem and there are numerous issues to be resolved in different situations. We propose method engineering as an approach to organise interoperability knowledge in a method chunk repository. In order to organise the knowledge repository we need an interoperability classification framework associated to it. In this paper we propose a generic architecture for a method chunk repository, elaborate on a classification framework and associate it to some existing bodies of knowledge. We also show how the proposed framework can be applied in a working example.