Sanya Uehara

Model-based architecture for the Intranet

We propose a system called CEE (Cooperative Environment for Enterprise-computing) which is based on a new architecture for the Intranet. CEE works based on the enterprise model which consists of the organization, business function/process conforming to IDEFO, and resources such as persons and documents. CEE integrates enterprise information and applications based on the enterprise model and enable the following functions on the WWW. 1) CEE automatically generates and maintains WWW pages and links according to business objects in the enterprise model. 2) CEE manages documents linked to the enterprise model and provides check-in/out and version control functions. 3) CEE promotes concurrent engineering by providing notification on the creation or modification of the output document of a process to the succeeding processes. 4) CEE provides document-based project management on the IDEFO chart in addition to traditional time-based project management on the Gantt chart.

Source code partitioning using process mining

Software maintenance of business application software such as adding new functions and anti-aging should be performed cost-effectively. Information such as grouping of business activities that are executed as a unit, source code which corresponds to the activities, and the execution volume of the activities is useful for deciding on what areas of business application software to invest in, and prioritizing maintenance requests. We propose a new method which extracts such information using the BPM-E process mining tool we have developed. The method was applied to in-house business systems; the results showed that the method successfully extracted the grouping of events, but that there are accuracy issues in associating events with source code.

Enterprise model-based software architecture with server component integration

Many companies are seeking new information systems that support more business activities than current systems. Such a system should enable more rapid information collection and sharing, and promote increased automation. Furthermore, there is a strong technological demand for the integration of various business systems and rapid modification of business processes and rules embedded in the system. To meet this demand, we propose enterprise model-based software development and associated software architecture with integrated server components. An experimental but practical system has been developed and evaluated in projects located in various countries. This paper discusses the viability of enterprise model-based software architecture with integrated server components such as a business application system, a Web server, a workflow server, and a directory server.

An optimistic method for updating information in distributed collaborative work

Proposes a new method for updating information in distributed collaborative work. The effective performance of collaborative work distributed among several locations requires that information be replicated and freely updated in each distributed server. This is difficult to achieve with existing information-sharing methods such as the WWW and workflow. Our optimistic lock control method enables the direct updating of replicated information in any server while maintaining consistency among all the servers. A server failure is not critical to other servers because there is no master server. This method differs from the traditional master-slave method in which updates are performed in a specific master server. This paper also addresses the dynamic deployment of a new server. Our method is being used on a trial basis for an international software development project between Japan and India.

A maintenance support system based on high-level control-flow and data dependency

We propose a new method to support the maintenance of large scale business application systems, and discuss its implementation. Large scale business applications handle huge numbers of data items. To improve the maintenance of business application systems, our method proposes integrating the following features: (1) a high level control flow diagram which displays an unstructured program in a structured form; (2) a data dependency diagram which is essential in understanding business rules; and (3) ripple effect analysis functions to find the side effects of program modification. This paper also describes an execution path model and a repository which enable us to efficiently implement the above features. The system has been developed to reflect the discussions with software maintainers.

Practical experiences of designing a distributed collaborative system

The PI-CEE(Project Information Cooperative Enterprise Environment) system is a project information management system that uses Java applications and is based on the model-based distributed collaborative work support concept. It is designed to achieve optimal performance with model-based Java applications for application to large-scale projects. We applied the first prototype of PI-CEE to a large-scale project. The result was twofold: memory use and response time worsened with increases in data quantity. Our design concept is based on doing four things: designing a server transaction system and database, implementing client cache management, making improvements in server-client communication, and multiple-server replication. We discuss our system, the general lessons that we learned from its application, and the problems we encountered and their resolutions.

A Vision and Information Technologies for Intelligent Society

Recently new technologies such as cloud computing, massive data processing, and knowledge processing are emerging to enable new ways to build IT infrastructures. On the other hand companies and our society face more and more complex issues today. Accordingly, the number of new IT services that should be designed to address the needs of multiple companies or stakeholders is increasing. On the contrary most IT systems up to now have been designed to satisfy limited business functions within a single enterprise, typically substituting simple human activities. With this in mind, in this keynote a new vision will be introduced that shifts the system design paradigm from IT-centric to human-centric, focusing on “people and society” and the “value and benefit” that they will obtain from IT systems. Also research directions such as “value-based visualization & optimization” and “value-based knowledge processing” that will underpin such new infrastructures under this vision will be discussed.

Panel: Evolution and Changes in Information System Technologies in Industry

Today, numerous standardization activities are going on around Web Services and XML, and they bring us evolution and changes in technologies for building distributed systems. For instance, they encourage loosely coupling integration of distributed systems with http-based protocols such as SOAP rather than remote procedure call based CORBA protocols. Also, they shift interface definition from API-based to XML-based, which makes it easier to extend interface among unknown parties. It is important to understand that how such standards change or improve the way to build distributed systems on the Internet with broad-band capabilities.

Interactive variable classification technique to support the maintenance of COBOL business application systems

This paper introduces a variable classification technique to support the maintenance of COBOL application systems. It classifies program variables according to what domain entities they represent. It supports various types of software maintenance. In a system modification, it is necessary to identify the source code related to the problem at hand properly. This maintenance phase, called the impact analysis, involves significant costs in large-scale business application systems. The variable classification presented supports finding all variables to be checked and modified. In a system restructuring, the variable classification is needed to restructure data declarations. The behavior of the classification can be changed interactively with several parameters. This paper also presents these parameters and how to set them for each type of maintenance task.

Reverse engineering from COBOL to narrative specification

We describe a new reverse engineering technology to generate a narrative specification used by real-world maintainers which facilitates the understanding of business procedures in existing COBOL programs. It defines business process logic and how to recognize it in a program. It also defines how to generate narrative specifications based on this process logic. We also discuss a specification-based maintenance support system; proof-correction marking and parallel scrolling. Evaluations were made in collaboration with more than six software maintainers by inspecting 500 generated specifications from real programs of financial firms. The evaluation suggests that generated specifications are helpful in clarifying the program in terms of business procedures and in locating statements to be changed during software maintenance.