MDA in Enterprise Architecture? The Living System Theory to the Rescue…

Integrating business and information technology (IT) is essential for enterprises to be competitive. The integration of business and IT forces project teams to analyze and design a hierarchy of systems such as: groups of companies collaborating in business systems, people and IT systems collaborating in business processes, software components collaborating in IT systems, and programming language objects collaborating in software components. The current tools, and in particular MDA, have not been tailored for the design of hierarchical systems. As a result the project teams have difficulties designing integrated business and IT systems. In this paper we present a technique for supporting the design of hierarchical systems. We were inspired by Millers General Theory of Living System, a theory that addresses the analysis of hierarchical living systems. We provide concrete guidelines on how to introduce levels in UML-based system modeling, in general, and in MDA in particular. This allows the project team to develop one, common, integrated enterprise (or project) model. This in turn enables the different specialists to reason about and design business and IT systems that are truly integrated. The overall benefit is an increase in the project success rate.

Formal semantics for refinement verification of entreprise models

Irina Rychkova

In this dissertation we investigate how Business/IT alignment in enterprise models can be enhanced by using a software engineering stepwise refinement paradigm. To have an IT system that supports an enterprise and meets the enterprise business needs, management seeks to align business system with IT systems. Enterprise Architecture (EA) is the discipline that addresses the design of aligned business and IT systems. SEAM is an Enterprise Architecture method, developed in the Laboratory of Systemic Modeling (LAMS) at EPFL. SEAM defines a visual language for building an enterprise model of an organization. In this work, we develop a theory and propose a technique to validate an alignment between the system specifications expressed in the SEAM language. We base our reasoning on the idea that each system (an organization, a business system, or an IT system) can be modeled using a set of hierarchical specifications, explicitly related to each other. Considering these relations as refinement relations, we transform the problem of alignment validation into the problem of refinement verification for system specifications: we consider that two system specifications are aligned if one is correctly refines the other. Model-driven engineering (MDE) defines refinement as a transformation between two visual (or program) specifications, where a specification is gradually refined into an implementation. MDE, however, does not formalize refinement verification. Software engineering (SE) formalizes refinement for program specifications. It provides a theory and techniques for refinement verification. To benefit from the formal theories and the refinement verification techniques defined in SE, we extend the SEAM language with additional concepts (e.g. preconditions, postconditions, invariants, etc). This extension enables us to increase the precision of the SEAM visual specifications. Then we define a formal semantics for the extended SEAM modeling language. This semantics is based on first-order logic and set theory; it allows us to reduce the problem of refinement verification to the validation of a first-order logic formula. In software engineering, the tools for the automated analysis of program specifications are defined. To use these tools for refinement verification, we define a translation from SEAM visual specifications to formal specification languages. We apply, using case studies, our theory and technique in several problem areas to verify: (1) if a business process design and re-design correspond to high level business process specifications; (2) if a service implementation corresponds to its specifications. These case studies have been presented to a group of domain experts who practice business/IT alignment. This inquiry has shown that our research has a potential practical value.

EPFL2008

Using the Physics of Notations Theory to Evaluate the Visual Notation of SEAM

George Popescu, Alain Wegmann

Modeling languages are used to make models that are commonly used in communicating about real-life situations such as the modeling of business and IT requirements in organizations. A way to evaluate how effective the modeling languages are for communicating their intended messages is to use the set of nine principles defined in the Physics of Notations Theory (PoNT, Moody). PoNT helps designers evaluate the notation of modeling languages and provides guidelines for improving it. We apply this theory to evaluate the visual notation of a systemic method, the Systemic Enterprise Architecture Methodology (SEAM) that is designed to model business and IT requirements. In order to make the SEAM notation more cognitively effective, we identify some notation limitations and provide specific recommendations for improvement for each of the nine PoNT principles.

2014

Strengthening MDA by Drawing from the Living Systems Theory

Otto Preiss, Alain Wegmann

OMGs Model Driven Architecture initiative comes at a time where information system builders and integrators have realized that application design and thus application interoperability is not primarily a technology issue but is about understanding different types of systems, involving different professional and scientific disciplines. Understanding requires thinking and thinking is modeling. Hence, MDA provides a framework for modeling systems, especially those systems that are relevant in the context of IT-system integration within and across company boundaries. However, model correspondence, i.e., relations and transformations among models and views in a consistent way, presents a challenging problem for MDA. Bridging of disciplines was also a key motivation for the systems science communities, and in particular for the life sciences. A widely accepted theory about all living systems was developed by J. G. Miller the Living Systems Theory. His theory is striking because the basic concepts and principles are applicable at all levels, i.e., for all types of livings systems, from a cell to a supranational organization. The Living Systems Theory thus provides a good basis for consistently relating different systems and different views. In this paper, we will show how the living systems theory can be used to go about the problem of model correspondences. In particular, we suggest that MDA explicitly use the notions of a model reality with organizational levels based on a modeling ontology that is derived from the living systems theory.

2002

Formal semantics for refinement verification of entreprise models

Irina Rychkova

EPFL2008