Modelling business rules in an office environment

Abstract

Current approaches in the field of information systems methodologies deal primarily with the capture and specification of models which are concerned with the target computer-based system but often fail to adequately capture and explicitly specify the (organisational) business concepts, objects, rules, constraints and - generally - the corporate knowledge upon which any development of a new information system or the evolution of an existing one, must be based.This paper advocates an approach which explicitly recognises the role of organisational policy within an information system and visibly maintains this policy throughout the software development process, from requirements specifications through to an executable implementation.This paper introduces the philosophy and architecture of the TEMPORA paradigm and describes the conceptual models which render such an approach a feasible undertaking.