Journal Title INFORMATION SYSTEMS
ISSN 0306-4379
Aim/Scope/Research Area Abstract: The ARIS Toolset rerpresents an internationally successful software system for analyzing, modeling and navigating business processes.
It is the result of interlinking the findings of conceptual research, research prototypes and professional development. The ARIS Toolset integrates manifold ideas for the description of information systems, repository structures - right up to automated customizing of standard software. These ideas emerged from the work of many people in different research projects. The paper narrates how the lengthy and difficult conceptual work created a foundation of knowledge and experience which in turn produced an ""explosion"" of numerous prototypes; it also tries to elaborate on the effort it takes to convert prototypes into marketable products.

Guest Editorial: Special Issue on Distributed Information Systems in Business and Management
by Wolfgang Konig.............................................625-627

Data Sharing Economics and Requirement for Integration Tool Design
by Eberhard Stickel, Jens Hunstock, Anke Ortmann
and Jan Ortmann............................................629-642

Abstract: In most of today's companies we find heterogeneous database systems containing redundant and inconsistent data. This threatens the ability to make coordinated, organization-wide responses to business problems. Benefits of data integration need not dominate the costs. In spite of this, we argue that some kind of common understanding of information structures in necessary. Thus, data integration is necessary at least to some degree. In the literature only technical aspects of schema integration are treated. Also, the complexity issue (large schemata are hard to understand) is usually not addressed explicitly. We present a business process oriented strategy for data integration. This method allows the determination of the order and the degree of integration. Complexity is reduced by schema clustering during the pre-integration phase.

IINCOME/STAR: Methodology and Tools for the Development of Distributed Information Systems
by Andreas Oberweis, Gabriele Scherrer and Wolffreid Stucky...643-660

Abstract: INCOME/STAR is an experimental environment for the cooperative development of distributed information systems. This paper presents some of INCOME/STAR's innovative features in the area of information systems engineering: First a new type of high-level Petri nets, so-called Nested Relation/Transition nets (NR/T-nets), is described. NR/T-nets allow the modeling of concurrent processes and related complex structured objects in distributed business applications. New concepts for entity and relationship clustering were developed to support a stepwise top-down approach for Entity/Relationship based object modeling. Distributed multi-user simulation and prototyping are used for the evaluation and analysis of NR/T-nets and the involved object schema. Finally, ProMISE - an evolutionary process model for information system development - is introduced. A role-based group-ware component is part of the INCOME/STAR architecture to support communication, organization and social interaction in development projects.

MAMBA: Automatic Customization of Computerized Business Processes
by St. Kirn, R. Unland and U. Wanka...........................661-682
Abstract: Due to recent market challenges organizational researchers have developed a variety of strategies how organizations can continuously survive in highly dynamic, sometimes even hostile environments. One of the most important strategies aims to enhance the flexibility of enterprises through widespread decentralization, while another well-known approach advocates customer orientation through systematic business process (re-) engineering. This paper addresses organizational flexibility and business process orientation from the perspective of information systems. It starts from a requirement analysis which investigates the challenges of contemporary organizational strategies and then proceeds towards an approach that supports the flexible modeling of business processes by linking decentralized organizational procedures. For this purpose a set of process modeling and process interaction operators is defined. These operators also allow to automatically create and customize configurations of computerized business processes. This progress in cooperative information processing technology contributes significantly to the recently emerged concept of the computerized enterprise. The concepts are presented in the context of a banking application, namely the Credit Advisory Subsystem of our banking application MAMBA.

A Generic Approach for Computer-Assistance of Complex Decision Processes
by T. Heissel, H. Krallmann, U. Meyer, M. Muller-Wunsch, C. Schopf
and A. Woltering...........................................683-697
Abstract: The increasing globalization of markets has raised the competitive pressure. The urge to adapt to rapidly changing conditions has forced many companies to introduce more flexible organizational forms. An adequate information management has to support these changes. One of the key success factors of a corporation will be the capability to perform high quality decision processes. The workbench TUB-MAGIC has been designed and implemented to support the development of distributed, intelligent decision support systems. They use intelligent agents to assist the decision-making process in complex situations. The concepts and the realization of TUB-MAGIC were tested by the development of the application MAGNIFICO. It has been implemented to support a cooperative general financial consulting process of a financial institution, e.g. banking corporations.

Comparisons of Agent Approaches with Centralized Alternatives Based on Logistical Scenarios
by Peter Mertens, Jurgen Falk and Stefan Spieck...............699-709
Abstract: The research work described in this paper puses two goals. Firstly, it deals with how Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) techniques are used to solve ""real-world"" logistical problems. Secondly, it compares decentralized solutions (agent systems) with alternative centralized approaches. The results of most of the cases indicate that concerning the main objectives the agent system can out-perform alternative approaches. A general statement in favour of the DAI-approaches is not possible, though.
Frequency of Journals Yearly
Weblink http://bubl.ac.uk/archive/journals/infsys/v19n0894.htm
Publisher ARIS

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