Australian Computer Society: ACS Digital Library
Not a member yet
884 research outputs found
Sort by
Grammatical Conversion of Descriptive Narrative - an application of discourse analysis in conceptual modelling
Get PDFFact-oriented conceptual modelling begins with the search for facts about a universe of discourse (UoD). These facts may be obtained from many sources, including information systems reports, tables, manuals and descriptive narrative both verbal and written. This paper presents some initial findings that support the use of discourse analysis techniques as an approach to developing elementary fact based sentences for information systems conceptual schema development from written text.
Although this discussion paper only considers the NIAM (fact-oriented) conceptual schema modelling method, the IS087 report from which the research case study is taken describes other conceptual methods for which the research contained in this paper could be applicable (e.g. Entity Relationship analysis). The case study could be modelled exactly in the form in which the text is initially found, but grammatical analysis focuses consideration on alternative, potentially better, expressions of a sentence, a theme which is described and demonstrated. As a result of having applied grammatical sentence simplification with co-ordinate clause splitting, each sentence could be expressed as a complete, finite, independent collection of declarative simple statements.
The outcome from the application of the techniques described provides at a minimum a discourse analysis of descriptive narrative which will have retained its meaning and contextual integrity while at the same time providing a simplified and independent clause representation for input to the fact-oriented conceptual schema modelling procedure
A Content Specification for Business Process Models
Get PDFBusiness process modeling is an essential prerequisite to business process reengineering (BPR), and workflow management (WFM). Process models have been traditionally used to model software processes, and many business process models are adaptations of these process models. Using these process models to represent business processes results in two problems. First, since these process models usually represent different perspectives of systems (or in this case, businesses) the user needs to integrate multiple existing models to completely represent the business processes. This reduces the ease of use, and leads to a lower acceptance by users. Second, business processes contain concepts not found in software processes (e.g., physical objects, roles, etc.). Traditional process models cannot represent these new concepts, and hence traditional process models model business processes inadequately. These two problems can be easily solved if a comprehensive business process model exists, that models all perspectives of a business process, and that allows representation of these new concepts. As a first step towards this goal, we propose a content specification that would need to be satisfied by such a business process model.
The primary contribution of this work is a comprehensive content specification for a business process model that will solve the two problems listed above. This content specification also serves as a framework to analyze process models in detail, and to compare them based on their content (i.e., what concepts they model) and the degree to which they model each aspect of a business process (i.e., how much of a business process they model)
Data Warehouse Architecture for DSS Applciations
Get PDFA data warehouse facilitates the integration of disparate operational databases in an enterprise into a single store. The warehouse then provides knowledge workers with easy access to historical, summarized and other forms of aggregated data. A major flaw in present warehouse architectures is the de-coupling of the warehouse database from its underlying operational databases. This creates two problems: the difficulty in updating the warehouse and the inability to provide users with a drill-down feature from warehouse to current data. We propose an architecture that is based on a federated database system extended to incorporate a materialized warehouse. A federated database provides the basic mechanism to tightly couple heterogeneous databases, which in this case are the operational and warehouse databases. The warehouse database is a special component in the federation, made up of historical data, external data and materialized views of the operational data. This approach enables users to access historical and current data when required, and provides a method of maintaining the warehouse as an integrated view of the underlying operational data sources
How Strategic are Strategic Information Systems?
Get PDFThere are many examples of information systems which are claimed to have created and sustained competitive advantage, allowed beneficial collaboration or simply ensured the continued survival of the organisations which used them These systems are often referred to as being 'strategic'. This paper argues that many of the examples of strategic information systems as reported in the literature are not sufficiently critical in determining whether the systems meet the generally accepted definition of the term 'strategic' - that of achieving sustainable competitive advantage.
Eight of the information systems considered to be strategic are examined here from the standpoint of one widely-accepted 'competition' framework- Porter's model of industry competition . The framework is then used to question the linkage between the information systems and the mechanisms which are required for the enactment of strategic business objectives based on competition. Conclusions indicate that the systems are compatible with Porter's framework. Finally, some limitations of the framework are discussed and aspects of the systems which extend beyond the framework are highlighte
A Partial Test and Development of Delone and Mclean's Model of IS Success
Get PDFDeLone and McLean's (1992) comprehensive review of different information system success measures concludes with a model of interrelationships between six IS Success constructs. This paper critically examines the meaning of four of these constructs and the evidence of relationships between them. It then provides results from empirical tests of these relationships. Tests are conducted using both conventional ordinary least squares regression path analysis and structural equation modeling - with substantially similar results. The empirical results provide substantial support for the "up stream" two thirds of DeLone and McLean's model. Three factors. System Quality, Information Quality, and Usefulness, are found to explain 75% of the variance in the overall User Satisfaction measure. The empirical results also provide substantial support for the use of usefulness as an IS success measure, and of the hitherto-unreported importance of "Importance of the task" in user perceptions of IS usefulness
Knowledge Analysis of Tasks as a Basis for Interface Design of Complex Developmental Systems
Get PDFComplex development systems are interactive software systems used for the manipulation, design or development in complex problem domains. This paper highlights some of the limitations of Johnson's Knowledge Analysis of Tasks (KAT) (Johnson, 1989, 1992) and proposes a modified version of KAT where task knowledge can be analysed and grouped in a way that will make it useful in the derivation of interfaces in complex developmental systems. This modified form has been applied to the domain of intelligent distributed control systems in an attempt to develop interface concepts for the development, installation and documentation of such systems. The paper further shows how this extended version of KAT may prove a useful input to object oriented analysis
Operational Complexity of Direct Manipulation Tasks in a Windows Environment
Get PDFA method to quantify operational complexity of direct manipulation tasks in a windows environment is discussed. The method utilises a formula from communication theory due to Shannon and Weaver which describes the uncertainty H(p1,p2,...pn) in outcome of an event which is the result of a Markov process where the individual events have probabilities of occurrence P1,p2,-Pn- A taxonomy of basic windows operations is developed for Microsoft Windows and used to show that a windows dialogue can also be described as a Markov process. The H formula is then applied to determine the total complexity of a sequence of basic windows operations and thus provide some measure of the complexity of a given task as seen by the user. An estimate of the total entropy of a Microsoft Windows language source is obtained, indicating that the redundancy of windows dialogue is about 28%
Software Quality Management and Organisational Fit
Get PDFThis paper describes some of the findings, of an ongoing ethnographic study of a computer operations section in an Information Technology Centre. The study finds that after an initial period of staff acceptance of prescribed quality management procedures, certain features of organizational culture, structure and power, work against continued conformance. Procedures will be modified, firstly to resolve any inconsistencies between the prescribed procedures and strongly held beliefs and values about work practices and organization, and secondly to reduce or eliminate perceived threats. The paper argues that software quality management is based on a Unitarian approach to organization, which ignores the plurality of beliefs and work contexts which exist in an organization, and which assumes that organizational features can be managed and changed in predictable ways. This paper suggests that a pluralist approach to organizational analysis helps to reveal the nature and extent of changes required to the quality management system and the requirements for implementing changes