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is not difficult to implement in a DBMS [ 10, 11] . Unfortunately, the creators of
object-oriented systems preferred to implement the static specialization by means
of the inheritance mechanism. Nevertheless, the dynamic specialization is the most
interesting at the conceptual level for the IS domain, because the obtained models
are much more rigorous. The situation is then not complex but complicated due to
drawbacks of the chosen design by creators of systems.
The general rule is that it is impossible to automatically translate conceptual
models into informatics models due to the complexity of informatics. But it is pos-
sible to assist the transfer of a conceptual model into a system if we develop a deep
knowledge of the situations that the persons in charge of the activities have to over-
come. This is also fundamental for another reason: the reverse way, from a system
to a conceptual model, is also meaningful in the IS development. For instance, very
often developers can find lacks in the conceptual model: they will be able to explain
the lack if the reverse way is viable.
3.3 Overlap Between the IS Conceptual World
and the Activities World
The stakes of the activities world and the conceptual world are completely different
because in the first one the stakes concern strategies, organization, people, budget,
etc. and in the second one the stakes concern information which can be efficient
to support activities by means of information systems. The fourth dimension of
shift presented in the previous section claims that it is not a question of translating
activities into processes supported by an IS.
Nevertheless, these two worlds have a lot of common concepts: the major one
is information but it does not have the same meaning in the two worlds. In the
conceptual world information must be taken into account by the information system
when in the activities world information can come from the IS but also can have
many other origins. Another common concept is decision : one of the targets of the IS
world is to improve the informational environment of decisions, when in the world
of activities the main question is to take decision and to assume their consequences.
Activity , task , process are well known concepts of the domain of management, of
organization, of human resources, but they are also popular in the IS domain, where
they refer to IS dynamic part such as workflows. Even some research papers are
confusing, because they did not find necessary to precise the world they address.
However these two worlds, activities and conceptual, don't obey the same criteria
of quality and of rigour because their stakes are not the same.
The traditional position was to consider that the activities world has to decide
what are the objectives of the IS development. So, the inputs of an IS development
would be given by the activities world and then the IS conceptual world has to find
a solution, which becomes a problem for the informatics world, which has to solve
it by means of systems.
But, IS pioneers discovered that this schema was not fruitful for the enterprise
itself and the overlap between the activities world and the IS conceptual world must
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