On Roles of Models in Information Systems - Intentional Perspectives on Information Systems Engineering - page 16

On Roles of Models in Information Systems

Arne Sølvberg

Abstract The increasing penetration of computers into all aspects of human activ-
ity makes it desirable that the interplay among software, data and the domains where
computers are applied is made more transparent. An approach to this end is to
explicitly relate the modeling concepts of the domains, e.g., natural science, tech-
nology and business, to the modeling concepts of software and data. This may make
it simpler to build comprehensible integrated models of the interactions between
computers and non-computers, e.g., interaction among computers, people, physical
processes, biological processes, and administrative processes. This chapter contains
an analysis of various facets of the modeling environment for information systems
engineering. The lack of satisfactory conceptual modeling tools seems to be cen-
tral to the unsatisfactory state-of-the-art in establishing information systems. The
chapter contains a proposal for defining a concept of information that is relevant to
information systems engineering.

1 Introduction

Information systems are built in order to support some other system by keeping track
of its state-of-affairs, by supporting the exchange of information between the other
system and its environment, and by providing information needed for changing the
behavior of the other system, either through direct intervention or through making
information available for other change agents [ 3] . When seen from the information
system point of view, “the other system” is known by many different names, e.g., the
user system, the user domain, the Universe of Discourse (UoD), the real world, the
business processes. In particular during the development of an information system