• Danny Greefhorst, ArchiXL (chairman)
• Marc Lankhorst, Novay
• Erik Vermeulen, Atos Consulting
• Karin Middeljans, Ministerie LNV

• Guido Bayens , Novius: Architecture in the public sector
  
• Arnold Wentholt, ING: Architecture in the financial services sector
• Erik Vermeulen , Atos Consulting: Architecture in the health sector
  
• Alcedo Coenen, Sociale Verzekeringsbank: Business rules
• Mark Paauwe , Paauwe Research: Architecture visualisation
  
• Erik Proper , Radboud University Nijmegen: Architecture standards
  
• Marlies van Steenbergen , Sogeti: The effect of architecture
  
• Michael Widjaja , Accenture: SOA/BPM
  

Governing board:

• Daan Rijsenbrij , Radboud University (chairman)
• Paul Laagland, EquaTerra Sourcing Management
• Erik Vermeulen , Atos Consulting

With the e-business explosion of the past few years corporations were, and still are, faced with the challenge of time to market more than ever before. As a result the processes and applications that enable the enterprise were heavily augmented, extended, or both. Consequently, corporations currently have numerous disparate applications that provide similar and overlapping functionality and that are based on legacy architectures. These architectures are typically monolithic in nature and based on point-to-point interfaces. Executive management is realizing the inflexibility and cost of these legacy applications, and is looking for ways to innovate the application landscape. This is where Enterprise Architecture and Service Oriented Architecture come into the picture. This article describes the relationship between them, illustrated by a case study.

On average Dutch Enterprise Architecture products are attractive and provide guidance to the enterprise in times of change. However, they rarely address all issues completely. Only 50% of the Enterprise Architecture products are judged readable. The Enterprise Architecture products are very explicit about their status but do not mention a clear time span for the architecture to be valid or how the architecture should link to the existing enterprise. These are some of the results of a study to assess the quality of Enterprise Architecture products, we conducted in 2005.

For many, the term Enterprise Architecture conjures up visions of colorful models and fat documents with guidelines. These products of the Enterprise Architecture process are indeed its most tangible result. Most architects can intuitively tell which models are the most readable and which guidelines are the strongest but that intuition is not objective enough to produce an independent measure of the quality of an architecture product. Until recently, no such measurement existed. This paper explores the concept of Enterprise Architecture product quality and how to measure it in a scientific manner.

A new on-line magazine is born that aims to be the prime source of information for architects in the digital world. Foreword by the chairmain of the governing board and the chairman of the editorial board.

We invite you to join Via Nova Architecture by submitting a contribution to our e-magazine.

The scope of Via Nova Architectura is “digital” architecture in the broadest sense of the word: business architecture, solution architecture, software architecture, infrastructure architecture or any other architecture an enterprise may develop to realize its business strategy. Also, the e-magazine wants to be a platform for practitioners and researchers alike.

We are looking for contributions in the following categories:

• Position papers: Short description (1 page) of specific view on the architecture field with accompanying motivation.
• Case studies: Discussion of practical architectures, and potentially some lessons learned in this case.
• Reflection: Practical reflection on architectural methods, techniques, tools, and technologies. These contributions typically provide a discussion of insights from a practitioner’s perspective, without necessarily using scientific methods to arrive at these results. These contributions will typically also cover/apply to multiple cases rather than just a single case study (which would fall in the previous case).
• Research: Scientific reflection on architectural practice. These contributions typically aim to offer insights from a theoretical perspective. However, a clear connection to architectural practice is required. In arriving at the presented results, the authors should use sound scientific methods.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Architecture processes;
• Architecture and IT governance;
• Service-oriented architecture;
• Techniques for analysis and evaluation of architecture;
• Enterprise modeling;
• Viewpoints in architecture;
• Tool support for architects;
• Strategies for agile architecture;
• The value of architecture.
  

Next to articles on these topics, we invite authors to submit other relevant content, such as book reviews, opinion pieces, architecture models, and (open source) architecture tools.

Articles should be 4 to 20 pages long (position paper is 1 page) and include the author's name, affiliation and contact details, and be submitted as MS Word or PDF file. Upon acceptance the author is asked to provide a version that is based upon a standard MS Word template. Other types of contribution may be submitted in other, preferably open, file formats. All contributions can be submitted on this site or sent by e-mail to vianovaarchitectura@gmail.com.

All submissions will be peer reviewed for relevance and quality. The author can choose between a superficial and a quality review. Papers that pass the superficial review will be published as submitted. For a paper to pass the quality review the author should revise his/her contribution to reflect the review comments of the editorial board. It will appear in the magazine with a special "reviewed" quality stamp. Authors will be notified of acceptance within three months of submitting their contribution.

The preferred language is English, but papers in Dutch will also be considered. Copyright of the paper remains with the author.

My vision on architecture is that it is all about making fundamental choices, and influencing the right people in order to achieve the required change. This means that architecture is also very much concerned with change management and stakeholder management. I also believe that architecture should combine top-down and bottom-up views.

Herkent u dit? Uw organisatie kent meerdere divisies, wellicht opererend vanuit meerdere landen. Ieder onderdeel heeft zijn eigen ERP en CRM systemen, aangevuld met diverse best-of-breed pakketten en daarbovenop een forse hoeveelheid maatwerk. Dit white paper beschrijft de problematiek van complexe applicatielandschappen, de visie van Atos Consulting op het ontstaan hiervan en de mogelijke oplossingsrichtingen.

The importance of creativity as a strategic competence is growing rapidly; it is key to survival in the next era. Creativity is not limited to products and services but also to the way value chains / networks are structured and the nodes (partners) in the network are implemented. Technology will penetrate deeper and deeper in the execution and will push humans out of significant parts of the value chain. This transformation is not an optimisation of today's operating model. In order to make this transformation happen, organisations will have to brake free from the architectural paradigms of the past and open up for a fundamental new way of building.

Applications get more and more detached form the infrastructure they are running on. The same goes for the architectures of both. In the most extreme scenario, architectural design choices related to the infrastructure are made completely independent from the applications running on the infrastructure. For applications, the infrastructure in most cases is a given. One could compare the relationship between applications and the infrastructure with the way electrical appliciances relate to electricity (loosely coupled with plugs and sockets).

International

• The Open Group
• Institute For Enterprise Architecture Developments

 Dutch

• Landelijk Architectuur Congres 2006
• NAF - Nederlands Architectuur Forum
• NGI - Werkgroep Architectuur
• GIA - Genootschap voor Informatiearchitecten
• Studiegroep Menselijke Maat in IT
• Nederlandse Overheid Referentie Architectuur
• Architectuur e-gemeente
• De informatievoorzieningsarchitectuur als scharnier

Lately I have been involved in discussions on the role of models in enterprise architecture. Some people seem to think that an enterprise architecture describes detailed models of current and future situations. Typically these models are stored in an enterprise repository, that could also be filled partially by other sources such as the configuration management database or sourcecode files. Let's step back a little bit to look at the role of models in architecture in general.

Op donderdag 4 oktober zal in Lunteren het congres EAM2007 plaats vinden. Sprekers vanuit diverse organisaties vertellen hoe zij architectuur in de praktijk gebruiken en inzetten, en delen hun do's en don'ts met u. Verder vindt u op EAM2007 het actuele aanbod van methoden, tools en dienstverlening rond architectuur.

Often the best way to express a design is by means of a visual model. There's quite some modeling languages around, to name just a few: Archimate, UML, BPMN, EPC, IDEF, Use case maps, E3value. The complexity of the average language (an important improvement area) forces the architect to look for a tool to support his modeling effort. Architects who don't like the concept of being restricted to a single language and / or tool (a good habit I believe) will not likely invest in expensive tools.

Landelijk Architectuur Congres 2005

• Dr. W. ten Harmsen van der Beek – Hamer: Experience with Architectural Roadmaps

• Marleen Olde Hartmann, Jeroen van Beele, Martin op ’t Land:  The Open Group Architecture Framework compared with the Extensible Architecture Framework

• R. Bos,  H. Koning: Service Oriented Architecture

• Frank Boterenbrood: IV-architectuur en de polder

• Wiel Bruls:  On structure - or, the free will of an ICT architect

• Alcedo Coenen:  Wendbaarheid dankzij SOA

• mr. drs. J.A. Lukkien, ir. P.P.W.M. Hoeken: Informatie architectuur en flexibiliteit in financiële dienstverlening

• Michel Houben, Hans Janssen, Daan Rijsenbrij: Proces model voor het projectmatig opstellen van een applicatiearchitectuur voor een universiteit

• Jeroen Kurk: Service-oriëntatie bij Unive Verzekeringen

• Marcel Bijlsma, Marc Lankhorst, Maria Eugenia-Iacob, Henk Jonkers: Een service-georiënteerde architectuur voor de gemeentelijke e-dienstverlening

• drs. Ruud Nijhuis: De Uitgebalanceerde Bedrijfsarchitectuur: Realiseren van duurzame verbeteringen

• Ron van Nuland, Hans Janssen, Daan Rijsenbrij: Onderzoek naar architectuurprincipes voor de Radboud Universiteit

• Erik van Gineken, Erwin Oord: Een Service Oriented Architecture verdient een businesscase

• Sietse Overbeek, Sergej van Middendorp, Daan Rijsenbrij: De digitale werkruimte, noodzaak voor een moderne manager

• Mark Paauwe: Service Oriented Architectuur van Dragon1 werkt bij MEAVITA

• Erik Philippus: 'De Menselijke Maart' Software ontwikkeling in breder perspectief

• prof. dr. Daan Rijsenbrij: Kantekeningen bij 'Architectuur in de Digitale Wereld'

• Kees Bogaards: Een pleidooi voor een onafhankelijke Informatie Architecten Bureau

• prof. dr. Daan Rijsenbrij: Enterprise Architecture at Work

• mr. M. Post, J. Truijens: De Nieuwe Kleren van de Architect, over architectuur voor bouwbare systemen

• Walter Wittkamp: Nieuwe Architectuur Rijskoverheid

This paper gives an overview of advice, hints and tips on determining a roadmap through Capgemini’s Integrated Architecture Framework (IAF).

This document provides:
• a short description of IAF
• 2 typical routes that are followed by the roadmaps
• a basic roadmap template
• a list of 17 typical roadmaps
• examples of some typical roadmaps on enterprise and domain level
• conclusions

The future will bring more and more surprising products based on the reuse of digital 'residue'. These residue based products are products created on the residue of other products. To illustrate let me give you some examples:
- mobile phone positioning data (a residue mobile phone users leave when then are linked to the network) to calculate car traffic; a valuable input for car navigation devices (e.g. Vodafone and TomTom);
- (tagged) bookmarks collected by individual users in their browser can be used to build resource taxonomies (e.g. del.icio.us, mypip.com). An intranet version would be a simple and probably very effective way to manage corporate knowledge (especialy when it also enables highlighting).
- gaming data (e.g. a game to find similar characteristics) to create picture indexes; a valuable input for a search engine wanting to improve the relevance of image search (e.g. the espgame.org and peekaboom.org).

The field of information systems analysis and design includes numerous modeling methods and notations (e.g. ER, ORM, UML, DFDs, BPMN, EPC), that are typically evolving. Even with some attempts to standardize, new modeling methods are constantly being introduced, many of which differ only marginally from existing approaches. These ongoing changes significantly impact the way information systems are being analyzed and designed in practice.

Background

This workshop focuses on exploring, evaluating, and enhancing current information modeling methods and methodologies. Though the need for such studies is well recognized, there is a paucity of such research in the literature. The objective of EMMSAD'05 is to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners interested in modeling methods in systems analysis and design to meet, and exchange research ideas and results. EMMSAD'05 is the tenth in a very successful series of EMMSAD workshops, previously held in Crete, Barcelona, Pisa, Heidelberg, Stockholm, Interlaken, Toronto, Velden, and Riga. To mark the tenth anniversary of the workshop, this year the workshop includes an invited keynote address by Prof. Janis Bubenko Jr. that reflects on historical trends in information modeling.

EMMSAD'05 is jointly sponsored by the Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE), the International Federation for Information Processing Working Group 8.1 (IFIP WG 8.1), the International Federation for Information Processing Working Group 8.1 (IFIP WG 8.1), the Network of Excellence for Interoperability Research for Networked Enterprises Applications and Software (INTEROP), and the Association for Information Systems Special Interest Group on Systems Analysis and Design (AIS-SIGSAND). This year we had 36 submissions from all over the globe. After an extensive review process by a distinguished international program committee, with each paper receiving three or more reviews, we accepted the 21 papers that appear, together with an abstract of the keynote address, in these proceedings. Congratulations to the successful authors!

1. M. Adorni, F. Arcelli, D. Ardagna, L. Baresi, C. Batini, C. Cappiello, M. Comerio, M. Comuzzi, F. De Paoli, C. Francalanci, P. Losi S. Grega, A. Maurino, S. Modafferi, B. Pernici, C. Raibulet, and F. Tisato. The MAIS approach to web service design. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

   This paper presents a first attempt to realize a methodological framework supporting the most relevant phases of the design of a value-added service. A value-added service is defined as a functionality of an adaptive and multi-channel information system obtained by composing services offered by different providers. The framework has been developed as part of the MAIS project. The MAIS framework focuses on the following phases of service life cycle: requirements analysis, design, deployment, run time use and negotiation. In the first phase, the designer elicits, validates and negotiates service require-ments according to social and business goals. The design phase is in charge of modelling services with an enhanced version of UML, augmented with new features developed within the MAIS project. The deployment phase considers the network infrastructure and, in particular, provides an approach to imple-ment and coordinate the execution of services from different providers. In the run time use and negotiation phase, the MAIS methodology provides support to the optimal selection and quality renegotiation of services and to the dynamic evaluation of management costs. The paper describes the MAIS methodological tools available for different phases of service life cycle and discusses the main guidelines driving the implementation of a service management architecture, called reflective architecture, that complies with the MAIS methodological approach.

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2. S. Hakkarainen, D. Strasunskas, L. Hella, and S. Tuxen. Classification of Web-Based Ontology Building Method Guidelines: a Case Study. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

   Ontology is the core component in semantic Web applications. The employment of an ontology building method affects the quality of ontology and the applicability of ontology language. A weighted evaluation approach for ontology building guidelines is presented in this paper. The evaluation criteria are based on an existing classification scheme of a semiotic framework for evaluating the quality of conceptual models. A sample of Web-based ontology building method guidelines is evaluated in general and experimented with when using data from a case study in particular. Directions for further refinement of ontology building methods are discussed.

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3. P. Agerfalk and B. Fitzgerald. Methods as Action Knowledge: Exploring the Concept of Method Rationale in Method Construction, Tailoring and Use. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

   Systems development methods are used to express and communicate knowledge about systems and software development processes; i.e. methods encapsulate knowledge. Since methods encapsulate knowledge, they also encapsulate rationale. Rationale can in this context be understood as the reasons and arguments for particular method prescriptions. In this paper we show how the combination of two different aspects of method rationale can be used to shed some light on the communication and apprehension of methods in systems development. This is done by way of clarifying how method rationale is present at three different levels of method existence. By mapping existing research on methods onto this model, we conclude the paper by pointing at some research areas that deserve attention and where method rationale could be used as an important analytic tool.

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4. A. Persson, H. Gustavsson, Brian Lings, B. Lundell, A. Mattsson, and U. Ärlig. Adopting Open Source development tools in a commercial production environment - are we locked-in? In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

   Many companies are using model-based techniques to offer a competitive advantage in an increasingly globalised systems development industry. Central to model-based development is the concept of models as the basis from which systems are generated, tested and maintained. The availability of high-quality tools, and the ability to adopt and adapt them to the company practice, are important qualities. Model interchange between tools becomes a major issue. Without it, there is significantly reduced flexibility, and a danger of tool lock-in. We explore the use of a standardised interchange format (XMI) for increasing flexibility in a company environment. We report on a case study in which a systems development company has explored the possibility of complementing their current proprietary tools with open source products for supporting their model-based development activities. We found that problems still exist with interchange, and that the technology needs to mature before industrial- strength model interchange becomes a reality.

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5. C. Batini and R. Grosso. Reuse of a repository of conceptual schemas in a large scale project. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

   Large amounts of data are managed by organizations, available to be viewed and analysed from multiple perspectives, which becomes a fundamental resource to the effectiveness of the organizations. An organization can achieve full benefit from the available information by managing its data resource, through the planning of its exploitation and its maintenance. The concept of data repository fulfils these requirements, due to the fact that it contains the de-scription of all types of data produced, managed, maintained and exchanged in an organization. This paper describes an experience of the use of an existing repository of conceptual schema, representing a wide amount of entities of in-terest for Central Public administration, in order to produce the corresponding repository of the administrations located in a region. Several heuristics are de-scribed and experiments are reported.

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6. S. Lu and J. Parsons. Enforcing Ontological Rules in UML-Based Conceptual Modeling: Principles and Implementation. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

   UML is used for at least two purposes: OO software design, and conceptual modeling. However, UML's origins in software engineering may limit its appropriateness for conceptual modeling. Evermann and Wand [5,6,7] have developed a set of formal ontological rules that constrain the construction of UML diagrams to reflect underlying ontological assumptions about the real world. This paper examines issues in implementing that functionality in a UML CASE tool. The main contribution of our research is to distinguish four categories of rules for implementation purposes, reflecting the relative importance of different rules and the degree of flexibility available in enforcing them. We further propose four implementation strategies that correspond to these rule categories, and identify some rules that cannot be implemented without changing the UML specification. We have implemented the rules in an open-source UML CASE tool, providing a proof-of-concept demonstration of the feasibility and usefulness of the approach.

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7. C. Glezer, M. Last, E. Nahmani, and P. Shoval. Experimental Comparison of Sequence and Collaboration Diagrams in Different Application Domains. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

   This article reports the findings from a controlled experiment where both the comprehensibility and the quality of UML interaction diagrams were investigated in two application domains: management information system (MIS) and real-time (RT) system. The results indicate that collaboration diagrams are easier to comprehend than sequence diagrams in RT systems, while there is no difference in their comprehension in MIS. With respect to quality of diagrams constructed by analysts, in MIS collaboration diagrams are of better quality than sequence diagrams, while in RT there is no significant difference in their quality.

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8. J. Araújo and A. Moreira. Integrating UML Activity Diagrams with Temporal Logic Expressions. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

   UML is a standard modelling language that is able to specify a wide range of object-oriented concepts. However, the diagrams it offers are many times accused of lack of rigour to specify precisely some critical requirements and therefore it is often needed to complement the semantics of the UML diagrams using OCL or any other formal language. In the case of activity diagrams (used here to describe use cases), OCL is not the most appropriate formal language, as it does not represent temporal aspects directly. Our aim is to complement the well-accepted simplicity of activity diagrams with a temporal logic specification to give a more precise semantics to the final model. This specification can be further used to validate requirements against the stakeholders using animation techniques.

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9. S.J.B.A. Hoppenbrouwers, H.A. (Erik) Proper, and Th.P. van der Weide. Towards explicit strategies for modeling. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU, pages 485-492. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

   We present an initial framework resulting from our ongoing research concerning modelling strategies. Our approach is rooted in a subjectivist, communication-based view on modelling. Under this approach, models are viewed as the result of modelling dialogues, which are a specialized sub-type of the diverse conversations that constitute a system development conversation at large. By focussing on the process of modelling instead of properties of models or modelling languages, we expect, eventually, to be able to better understand and deal with some currently problematic aspects of modelling, in particular model validation in context. We sketch plans for an environment for studying modelling conversations and strategies.

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10. G. Dallons, P. Heymans, and I. Pollet. A template-based analysis of GRL*. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

    The goal-oriented paradigm is widely popular in Requirements Engineering. However, the central notion of goal remains one of the most controversial in the field. A possible cause might be that research has devoted too little attention to studying the ontological foundations of goal-oriented languages. In this paper, we have studied the case of GRL, the goal-oriented requirements language being standardized by the ITU. Our analysis followed the template-based approach proposed by Opdahl and Henderson-Sellers. After defining a metamodel for GRL, we have applied the template to each of its constructs to extract and formalize detailed syntactic and semantic information. The semantic part of the template focuses on establishing a mapping between a construct and its meaning, defined in term of the Bunge-Wand-Weber ontology. Evaluations of both GRL and the template are provided as well as suggestions to improve them.

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11. L. Favre. A Rigorous Framework for Model-Driven Development. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

    The Model Driven Architecture (MDA) is an initiative of the Object Management Group (OMG) to model-centric software development. MDA distinguishes different kinds of models: Platform Independent Models (PIM), Platform Specific Models (PSM) and code models. Metamodeling plays a key role in MDA. A combination of formal specification techniques and metamodeling can help us to address Model-Driven Developments (MDD). In this paper we describe a MDA framework that comprises the NEREUS metamodeling notation, a system of transformation rules to bridge the gap between UML/OCL and NEREUS and, the definition of MDA-based components and model/metamodeling transformations. NEREUS can be viewed as an intermediate notation open to many other formal languages. In particular, we show how to integrate NEREUS with algebraic languages such as CASL.

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12. J.A. Bubenko. A Historical Perspective on Conceptual Modelling: from Information Algebra to Enterprise Modelling and Ontologies. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

    The evolution of research and practice in the area of conceptual in-formation systems modelling during more than four decades is reviewed. This is done from the author's Scandinavian perspective, and focuses on activities and results related to research and practice in the early system development phases. It covers the CODASYL Development Committee's Language Structure Group's report "An Information Algebra" in 1962, continues with the introduc-tion of the infological approach and elementary messages by Langefors in 1965, comments on a large number of modelling methods published in the 1970-ies and 80-ies as well as the report "Concepts and Terminology of the Conceptual Schema and the Information Base" reporting the work by the ISO working group ISO/TC97/SC5/WG5 in the early 80-ies. Approaches which are based on a temporal and deductive view of the application domain as well as object-oriented modelling languages are acknowledged. The talk continues with a dis-cussion of principles and research problems related to a topic we call "Enter-prise Modelling" and "Ontology Modelling". The role of conceptual modelling in information systems development during all these decades is seen as an ap-proach for capturing fuzzy, ill-defined, informal "real-world" descriptions and user requirements, and then transforming them to formal, in some sense com-plete, and consistent conceptual specifications. During the last two decades an additional role of modelling has evolved - to support user and stakeholder par-ticipation in enterprise analysis and requirements formulation and in develop-ment of shared conceptualisations of specific domains. The talk concludes that the gap between what is current thinking in research of conceptual modelling and current thinking in practice still seems to be rather wide.

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13. T.A. Halpin. Objectification. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

    Some information modeling approaches allow instances of relationships to be treated as entities in their own right. In the Unified Modeling Language (UML), this is called "reification", and is mediated by association classes. In Object-Role Modeling (ORM), this is called "objectification" or "nesting". While this modeling option is rarely supported by industrial versions of Entity-Relationship Modeling (ER), some academic ER versions do support it. Objectification is related to the linguistic activity of nominalization, of which two flavors may be distinguished: circumstantial; and propositional. In practice, objectification is prone to misuse, and some modeling approaches provide incomplete or flawed support for it. This paper analyzes objectification in-depth, shedding new light on its fundamental nature, and providing practical guidelines on using objectification to model information. Because of its richer semantics, the main graphic notation used is that of ORM. However, the main ideas are relevant to UML and ER as well.

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14. T. Wahl and G. Sindre. An Analytical Evaluation of BPMN Using a Semiotic Quality Framework. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

    Evaluation of modelling languages is important both to be able to select the most suitable languages according to the needs, and to improve existing languages. In this paper Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is presented and analytically evaluated according to the Semiotic Quality Framework. BPMN is a functionally oriented language well suited for modeling within the domain of business processes, but probably also general processes not only within the business domain. The evaluation indicates that BPMN is easily learned for simple use, and Business Process Diagrams (BPDs) are relatively easy to understand. Tools may fairly easily map BPDs into the BPEL4WS format, but executable systems then require creation of Web Services representing the Activities in BPDs. An evaluation according to the BWW ontology is useful for finding ontological discrepancies, and the semiotic framework is useful for evaluating quality on a relatively general level. These methods thus complement each other.

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15. A.G. Nysetvold and J. Krogstie. Assessing Business Processing Modeling Languages Using a Generic Quality Framework. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

    We describe in this paper an insurance company that has recently wanted to standardize on business process modeling language. To perform the evaluation, a generic framework for assessing the quality of models and modeling languages was specialized to the needs of the company. Three different modeling languages were evaluated according to the specialized criteria.

    The work illustrates the practical utility of the overall framework, where language quality features are looked upon as means to enable the creation of models of high quality. It also illustrates the need for specializing this kind of general framework based on the requirements of the specific organization.

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16. V. Kabilan. Contract Workflow Model Patterns Using BPMN. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

    Business Process Models are typically used to express inter or intra - enterprise business activities/processes. Contractual obligations need to be fulfilled through execution of business processes on behalf of the contracting parties . To do so, business contract terms and conditions need to be semantically integrated to existing internal business process models. Contract obligation, performance, non-performance and other related concepts have been expressed as conceptual models in a Multi-Tier Contract Ontology (MTCO). Based on the MTCO, business process modelers may model the contract obligation fulfillment process as Contract Workflow Models(CWM) using Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) diagrams. The paper discusses the ongoing research and choices made in the semantic translation from contract obligations to CWM - BPMN Diagrams. Some of the contract workflow patterns are also presented.

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17. J. Recker. Conceptual Model Evaluation. Towards more Paradigmatic Rigor. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

    Information Systems (IS) research has so far been primarily concerned with the development of new modeling languages, techniques, and methods. Also, evaluation approaches have been developed in order to assess the appropriateness of a modeling approach in a given context. Both modeling and evaluation approaches, however, lack epistemological rigor, leading to problems regarding the applicability of a certain modeling language in a given context on the one hand, and regarding the feasibility of certain evaluation approaches towards certain modeling questions on the other hand. We therefore argue for a philosophical-paradigmatic discussion of evaluation methods for conceptual modeling languages in order to assess their applicability in given modeling contexts and present our research in progress towards a framework for paradigmatic discussion on model evaluation.

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18. D. Ardagna, M. Comerio, F. De Paoli, and S. Grega. An Hybrid Approach to QoS Evaluation. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

    Usually, the process of development of services available as web applications considers only functional requirements. Since, an evergrowing number of users take advantage of di®erent kinds of communi- cation channels and devices, this process must be revised by considering new aspects: quality of service (QoS), user pro¯les and technical charateristics of channels. In previous works, we proposed a methodology that provides a rational to formalize the redesign process of existing services to support multi-channel access. This paper extends our approach and highlights how the QoS dimensions can be considered quantitatively in the different phases of the methodology. Moreover, an hybrid approach that allows the QoS evaluation, during the development of a service, is proposed.

    [PDF] [BiBTeX]
    
19. Y. Lin and D. Strasunskas. Ontology-based Semantic Annotation of Process Templates for Reuse. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

    Process templates are stored as valuable resources and then are retrieved and reused in other projects. In order to find a desired template, the semantics of various process templates should be machine-readable and interoperable. However, the heterogeneity of both model representations and modeling languages makes it difficult to reuse the templates. Here we adopt one of the emerging semantic web techniques - the semantic annotation of process templates in order to enhance the interoperability for better reuse of process templates. Our semantic annotation consists of three basic parts: model profile, model content and meta model annotation. A general process ontology and domain ontologies are referenced as the annotation information. Given process templates annotated by ontology, they are abstracted from language-specific details but to the level of necessary details for process templates to be reused.

    [PDF] [BiBTeX]
    
20. L. Xiao and D. Greer. Modeling, Auto-generation and Adaptation of Multi-Agent Systems. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

    We propose a lightweight approach that provides mechanisms for dynamic agent behavior at run-time. Agent collaborations are modeled in UML diagrams and agent behaviors are encoded in XML-based business rules. The combination of these captures the behavioral requirements and governs interagent and intra-agent behaviors. A CASE tool has been developed to enable the dynamic specification of agent behaviors and the generation of the agent systems. Agents get the appropriate rules in XML format and then translate and execute them at run-time. These rules are externalized and so maintenance effort is reduced, since there is no need to recode and regenerate the agent system. Rather, the system model is easily configured by users and agents will always get up-to-date rules to execute at run-time. The approach is illustrated with the aid of an e-business example and its efficacy discussed.

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21. V. Ovchinnikov. A Concept-Based Query Language Not Using Proper Relation Names. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

    The paper is focused on a concept-based query language that permits querying by using only application domain concepts. The query language has features making it simple and transparent for end-users: each query operation is completely defined by its result signature and nested operation's signatures; a query's signature represents an unordered set of application domain concepts; join predicates are not to be specified in an explicit form. In addition, the paper introduces constructions of closures and contexts as applied to the language. The constructions permit querying some indirectly associated concepts as if they are associated directly and adopting queries to user's needs without rewriting. All the properties make query creation and reading simpler in comparison with other known query languages. This query language is named as SCQL (Semantically Complete Query Language).

    [PDF] [BiBTeX]
    
22. G. Papastefanatos, K. Kyzirakos, P. Vassiliadis, and Y. Vassiliou. Hecataeus: A Framework for Representing SQL Constructs as Graphs. In T.A. Halpin, K. Siau, and J. Krogstie, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Evaluating Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD`05), held in conjunctiun with the 17th Conference on Advanced Information Systems 2005 (CAiSE 2005), Porto, Portugal, EU. FEUP, Porto, Portugal, EU, 2005. ISBN 9727520774

    Traditional modeling techniques typically focus on the static part of databases and ignore their dynamic part (e.g., queries or data-centric workflows). In this paper, we first introduce and sketch a graph-based model that captures relations, views, constraints and queries. We then present HECATAEUS, a tool for implementing and visualizing the above framework.

    [PDF] [BiBTeX]
    

Acknowledgements

Workshop Co-Chairs

1. Dr. Terry Halpin, Northface University, USA
2. Dr. Keng Siau, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA
3. Dr. John Krogstie, SINTEF and Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology, Norway

Program Committee

1. Solomon Antony (Texas Tech University, USA)
2. Akhilesh Bajaj (University of Tulsa, USA)
3. Richard Baskerville (Georgia State University, USA)
4. Dinesh Batra (Florida International University, USA)
5. Annie Becker (Florida International University, USA)
6. Giuseppe Berio (University of Torino, Italy)
7. Ilia Bider (IbisSoft, Sweden)
8. Nacer Boudjlida (Loria, France)
9. Paul Bowen (University of Queensland, Australia)
10. Chan Hock-Chuan (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
11. David Chen (University of Bordeaux, France)
12. Roger Chiang (University of Connecticut, USA)
13. Robert Chiang (University of Connecticut, USA)
14. Cecil Eng Heng Chua (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
15. Olga De Troyer (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
16. Jan Dietz (Delft University of Technology, Netherlands)
17. David Embley (Brigham Young University, USA)
18. John Erickson (University of Nebraska-Omaha, USA)
19. Andrew Gemino (Simon Fraser University, Canada)
20. Joey F. George (Florida State University, USA)
21. Ricardo Goncalves (UNINOVA, Portugal)
22. Peter Green (University of Queensland, Australia)
23. Jan Goossenaerts (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands)
24. Reimgijus Gustas (Karlstad Technical College, Sweden)
25. Terry Halpin (Northface University, USA)
26. Bill Hardgrave (University of Arkansas, USA)
27. Alan Hevner (University of South Florida, USA)
28. Paul Johanneson (Stockholm University, Sweden)
29. Chuck Kacmar (University of Alabama, USA)
30. Vijay Khatri (Indiana University, USA)
31. Steven Kelly (MetaCase, Finland)
32. Julie Kendall (Rutgers University, USA)
33. Ken Kendall (Rutgers University, USA)
34. Hee Woong Kim (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
35. John Krogstie (SINTEF and NTNU, Norway)
36. Uday Kulkarni (Arizona State University, USA)
37. Tan Kian Lee (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
38. Yingjiu Li (Singapore Management University, Singapore)
39. Ee-Peng Lim (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
40. Pericles Loucopoulos (University of Manchester, UK)
41. Kalle Lyytinen (Case Western Reserve University, USA)
42. Sal March (Vanderbilt University, USA)
43. Graham McLeod (University of Cape Town, South Africa)
44. Robert Meersman (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
45. Michele Missikoff (LEKS, IASI, Italy)
46. Michael zur Muehlen (Stevens Institute of Technology, USA)
47. Ng Wee Keong (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
48. Andreas L. Opdahl (University of Bergen, Norway)
49. Herve Panetto (University Henri Poincare Nancy I, France)
50. Jeffrey Parsons (University of Newfoundland, Canada)
51. Barbara Pernici (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
52. Michael Petit (University of Namur, Belgium)
53. Erik Proper (Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands)
54. Sandeep Purao (Pennsylvania State University, USA)
55. Sudha Ram (University of Arizona, USA)
56. Balasubramaniam Ramesh (Georgia State University, USA)
57. Antoni Olivé Ramon (Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya, Spain)
58. Colette Rolland (University of Paris 1, France)
59. Michael Rosemann (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)
60. Matti Rossi (Helsinki School of Economics, Finland)
61. Kurt Sandkuhl (Jönköping University, Sweden)
62. Peretz Shoval (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel)
63. Keng Siau (University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA)
64. Guttorm Sindre (University of Trondheim, Norway)
65. Il Yeol Song (Drexel University, USA)
66. Arne Sølvberg (NTNU, Trondheim, Norway)
67. Veda Storey (Georgia State University, USA)
68. Yong Tan (University of Washington, USA)
69. Heikki Topi (Bentley College, USA)
70. Dan Turk (Colorado State University, USA)
71. Pasi Tyrväinen (University of Jyvaskyla, Finland)
72. Ramesh Venkataraman (Indiana University, USA)
73. Christian Wagner (City University of Hong Kong, China)
74. Gerd Wagner (Brandenburg University of Technology at Cottbus, Germany)
75. Te Wei Wang (Florida International University, USA)
76. Roel Wieringa (University of Twente, Netherlands)
77. Carson Woo (University of British Columbia, USA)
78. Benjamin Yen (The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
79. Martin Zelm (CIMOSA, Germany)
80. Daniel Zeng (University of Arizona, USA)
81. Huimin Zhao (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA)
82. J. Leon Zhao (University of Arizona, USA)

• 2009
  The Open Group Roadshow - India 2009
• July 20 - 22, 2009
  The Open Group Conference, Toronto, Canada
• Sept 29 - Oct 1, 2009
  Software Architect 2009 - The technical conference for software architects London, UK
• October 19 - 21, 2009
  The Open Group Conference, Hong Kong, China
  

• 22-23 oktober 2009
  2^nd International SOA Symposium: Next Generation SOA!, WTC Rotterdam, The Netherlands
  
  Special discount for Via Nova Architectura
  As a subscriber/member of Via Nova Architectura we offer you an additional discount of 10% on the fee of € 1090,-. Fill in SOAVIA10 in the “Partner code” box on the registration form.
• 25-26 november 2009
  LAC 2009
  

Enterprise Architecture (EA) in the context of enterprise engineering addresses aspects of developing, improving and integrating organizations. The paper introduces an approach to EA proposing Integration Concepts (IC) to reconcile changing business process requirements and information systems. Being process-driven and supporting integration issues the chosen IC is a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Therefore the contribution aims at developing a methodology to support service engineering by defining architectural domains in an EA. The paper shows the need for methods in the field of domain engineering supporting the design of a SOA. The main contribution of the paper is an algorithm based modelling approach and a methodology to support service domain clustering. The clustering algorithms are using a model considering business processes, information systems and information system interfaces. The algorithm adopts network-centric approaches used in the field of social network analysis to define and/or identify service domain clusters in complex scenarios. The paper summarizes a case study in a globally operating company and closes with a conclusion. The paper is organized by chapters addressing context, objective, approach, case, results and lessons learned.

The aim of this research is to develop an information agent framework for knowledge discovery in enterprise architecture (EA). This framework is based on specific purpose ontology and knowledge discovery techniques. Such framework would facilitate strategic decision making for EA stakeholders by enabling them to analyze and monitor the portfolio of processes, data, applications, and organizational units in terms of their correlation and impact in the overall organization. This framework is very useful for affording key stakeholders with the appropriate view that is reliant on an accurate and concise picture of systems, applications, technologies and other infrastructure elements in the business and how these integrate to serve the enterprise. The paper discusses the concepts and components of this framework. Potential benefits of this framework over existing approaches are also discussed.

The first workshop on Trends in Enterprise Architecture Research (TEAR) was held in conjunction with the Enterprise Computing Conference (EDOC) in Hong Kong in October 2006. The positive response to that event encouraged us to hold the second workshop before a full year had passed. TEAR 2007 is therefore co-located with the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) in St. Gallen, Switzerland in June 2007.

Many architects put a lot of effort in rationalising the process of architecture decision making. These rational approaches to decision making typically break down in two stages: the problem identification stage and the problem solution stage. The idea behind the rational approach is that decision making follows a systematic method of logical reasoning steps that - if performed correctly - automatically lead to the optimal solution for the given problem. Behind this idea however hide two flawed assumptions: i) the world is well defined and ii) there's enough time to consider all the necessary combinations. To make the rational approach in complex decision making come to a decision on time, the architect is by definition forced to oversimplify.

The value returned by Enterprise Architecture (EA) is increasingly under consideration by researchers and practitioners. They struggle to justify the EA investments made. Quantifying the Enterprise Architecture benefits has always been a challenge because measurements and real value delivered can not often be expressed in simple technical oriented metrics only.  In this paper we suggest a multi-perspective framework, based on the concept of Balanced Scorecard (BSC), for providing guidance about where to identify and quantify the value of EA from the perspective of management. A derived methodology is used to localize a few selected Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) for measuring the benefits of Enterprise Architecture that help practitioners to design and implement the suggested framework.

Research indicates that the most effective IT governance approach is a federative approach. In this approach, IT guidelines are developed at enterprise level but the actual IT decisions are made decentral. The pure centralised model however appears to be more popular, but less successful. In an article about "Lessons from Iraq and Katrina", Bill Hall states that "From the organizational point of view, the processes of orientation and decision making must be moved closer to the periphery, where the deciders and actors can react faster and more accurately within the limits of what they are capable of observing."

To date, architects very often operate as soloists. Soloists with a knowledge of construction paradigms, patterns, technologies, methods, etc. But as the construction space keeps expanding, the required knowledge is increasing: technology stacks and tiers are added, construction techniques evolve, the line between off-the-shelve and bespoke development is fading and reusable services are becoming commodities and their number growing rapidly. As a result the architect (and engineering) population will specialise more and more.

Op 28 april heeft de IGZ, de Inspectie voor de Gezondheidzorg, een circulaire gestuurd naar alle openbare - en ziekenhuisapotheken. Hierin wordt gewaarschuwd dat de elektronische gegevensverwerking in en tussen apotheken op dit moment onbetrouwbaar is. Een en ander heeft in de landelijke pers voor flinke opschudding gezorgd.

Enterprise Architecture would be increasingly required by shareholders/owners to provide the blueprint of the business operation, describe assets, provide proof of regulatory compliance and map costs and profits on various operations.

• Niet meer vragen naar de bekende weg
• Zaken op orde hebben en niet meer uitgeven dan nodig is
• Weten hoe de zaken er voor staan
• Zich niet voor de gek laten houden
• Klantgericht zijn

This actually triggered me into realising that the Web 2.0 needs information architects. Of course, when an enterprise considers utilizing Web 2.0 technologies an enterprise architect should be involved in deciding-on/designing the best way of doing this. However, I also think the technology itself needs more architecting, or at least some good old conceptual thinking.

Hierbij willen Atos Consulting en Atos Origin jou graag uitnodigen voor het Atos Enterprise Architecture Careerevent op donderdagmiddag 3 april aanstaande.

Tijdens dit Careerevent willen we met jou in het College Hotel in Amsterdam tussen 15:00 en 18:00 nader ingaan op het volgende onderwerp: Hoe maak ik als architect het verschil bij de beslissers?

Digitale architectuur staat volgens John Froger heel dicht bij diens fysieke evenknie. Het is dus geen toeval dat de voormalige-CIO van ABP tijdens de terugblik op zijn tien jaar bij het pensioenfonds regelmatig gebruik maakt van analogieën uit de echte wereld. Ook visualiseren is volgens hem erg belangrijk. Bij de Sociale Verzekeringsbank, waar hij vóór zijn periode bij ABP werkte, liet hij de directievoorzitter de pijnpunten in de bedrijfsprocessen en architectuur zelfs letterlijk voelen door hem stapsgewijze fysiek het hele bedrijfsproces te doen doorlopen.

Hoe vaak ik al niet met een programma-manager om de tafel heb gezeten die niet meer wist waar te beginnen om zijn programma weer in goede banen te gaan leiden.

Een centrale vraag die ik als enterprise architect met de programma-manager dan probeer te beantwoorden, om het programma weer op de rails te krijgen, is: Wie doet nu wat en waarom en wie maakt welk product en wie gaat er dan wat mee doen?

Om de centrale vraag te kunnen beantwoorden is een gemeenschappelijk beeld bij de opdrachtgever, belanghebbenden en stuurgroep van de huidige situatie en gewenste situatie van de programmaomgeving essentieel. En wat doe ik dan: Ik zeg dat er een schets moet worden gemaakt. Er moet een programma-activiteitenschets worden gemaakt die is gebaseerd op de bouwplaat van de programmaomgeving.

‘Parkstad Nederland’

In mijn visie is Nederland één parkstad waar we nog veel zuiniger op zouden moeten zijn. We zouden duurzaam economisch gewin nog veel beter kunnen definiëren en inzetten om ons oranje park te kunnen behouden. De mentaliteit die we daarbij tentoonspreiden kunnen we weer inzetten in de ons omringende landen zodat we een voorbeeld vormen voor anderen – het zijn van een goed rentmeester.

Stel je eens voor: de komende eeuw zetten we ons in om met meer mensen en meer nationaliteiten dan ooit te voren samen te wonen, te werken en te recreëren. Dat we kennis opdoen en innoveren. En dat in een groene omgeving die ‘Parkstad Nederland’ heet.

Iedereen kent het wel, gegevenskwaliteit, of eigenlijk: het gebrek aan gegevenskwaliteit. Je doet een mailing de deur uit en enkele dagen later puilt je brievenbus uit met onbezorgbare post. Mensen zijn verhuisd, uit dienst of overleden. Een hele tak van industrie heeft zich hieromheen ontwikkeld. Ons 'eigen' Human Inference uit Arnhem heeft zich in die markt prima geweerd en is internationaal gereputeerd voor het 'schonen' van relatiebestanden.

Het valt op dat de oplossing zich vooral concentreert op symptoombestrijding: de verkeerde data wordt opgespoord en hersteld… Het lijkt erop dat we het probleem hebben aanvaard als een voldongen feit.

Architecten zijn vaak betrokken bij innovatie en vernieuwing. Er ontstaat ergens in de organisatie een idee, dit moet op allerlei manieren onderzocht worden, en alleen als het een vruchtbaar idee lijkt, tot een oplossing gebracht worden. En als het aan de architecten ligt, dan moet de oplossing natuurlijk onder architectuur gerealiseerd worden. Over wat dit precies behelst verschillen de lezingen echter.

Toen de meeste mensen nog gewoon in een fabriek werkten, waren er twee soorten medewerkers – fabrieksarbeiders en kantoorpersoneel. Je droeg al naar gelang je positie of een ranzige overall, of een schoon overhemd – bij voorkeur met een hagelwit boordje. Dat was duidelijk.

Toen de dienstensector opkwam, kwam er behoefte aan een nieuwe tweedeling. De mensen die in de vuurlinie stonden – de medewerkers met klantcontacten, bijvoorbeeld achter het loket van een bankfiliaal – werden ingedeeld bij de frontoffice, en de mensen die op de achtergrond hun werk deden – medewerkers van de administratieve organisatie en de stafdiensten – hoorden even vanzelfsprekend bij de backoffice. In de wandelgangen werd het vaak zo samengevat: de frontoffice verdient het geld, en de backoffice maakt het op.

Wat zou de midoffice hieraan nog kunnen toevoegen?

Bedrijfsarchitecten hebben als functie om te analyseren en te adviseren hoe je bedrijfsfuncties het beste in kunt richten. Evengoed hebben applicatiearchitecten zo’n functie voor applicatiefuncties en infrastructuurarchitecten voor infrastructuurfuncties. Het wordt pas lastig als men zich gaat afvragen wie nou in staat zou zijn om de architectuurfunctie zélf in te richten. Het is dan ook niet verwonderlijk dat het ontwikkelen van de bedrijfsarchitectuur van de architectuurfunctie vaak een moeizame bevalling is. Het functioneren van deze bedrijfsfunctie laat dan ook wel eens te wensen over. Het zou meer dan jammer zijn als dit het prille vakgebied zou belemmeren in zijn ontplooiing. In deze column wordt daarom vanuit een organisatiekundig perspectief betoogd wat de unique selling point van enterprise architectuur is.

Jim Webber komt de eer toe om als eerste – of op z'n minst één van de eerste – software analist publiekelijk zijn afkeer geuit te hebben van een “fat SOA”. Zijn levendige en amusante bijdrage aan de Qcon 2007 conferentie onder de titel “Guerilla SOA” [1] heeft ongetwijfeld velen aan het denken gezet. De laatste weken zijn vele industrie-goeroes hem in zijn voetsporen gevolgd. Onder hen bekende namen als Martin Fowler [2], David Linthicum [3] en Joe McKendrick [4]. Het onderwerp prikkelt op z'n minst de creativiteit. Kwalificaties als “Mam Boobs”, vergelijkingen met “Junk Food” en woordgrapjes als “Enterprise Service Busted”, “Erroneous Spaghetti Box” en “Same Old Atrocity” zijn niet van de lucht. Het lijkt wel een collectieve actie van de softwareontwikkelaars en -architecten gericht tegen de grote boze leveranciers met hun dikke, dure middleware. Tijd voor een dieet?

SQL is ongetwijfeld één van de baanbrekende standaarden van de software-industrie. De officiële standaard dateert uit 1986; inmiddels is SQL:2006 alweer de zesde versie. En SQL is springlevend. Het is zonder meer knap om in een industrie die zo in beweging is een standaard te ontwikkelen die al zo lang zo algemeen wordt gebruikt. Toch heb ik de indruk dat er een tot op heden onbenut verbeterpotentieel verborgen zit in deze populaire standaard. Het is de hoogste tijd voor een

Wanneer wordt uw legacysysteem antiek? Zou het dan een collectors item zijn? Kun je daar als architect anno 2008 misschien nog wat van leren? Het moet wel een goed systeem zijn, anders had het tenslotte nooit de status van legacy bereikt. Verdient het misschien vanuit een cultureel perspectief zelfs wel bescherming? Bestaat er überhaupt zoiets als cultureel erf-eh-'ware'?

Betekenis is context

Als het eruitziet als een eend, kwaakt als een eend en waggelt als een eend, is het waarschijnlijk een eend. Is dat beest nu eenduidig gespecificeerd? Nee natuurlijk niet, want er zijn talloze verschillende soorten eenden. Met andere woorden, voor een eendoloog, of hoe iemand die alles van eenden weet ook heten mag, zijn er al 4 onderfamilies.

Ons wereldbeeld is een interpretatie van de wijze waarop de wereld tot ons komt. Laten we er meteen een illustratie bij halen: bij ons kantoor hebben we een parkeerplaats. Het blijkt iedere keer weer lastig daar een plekje te verwerven. Dit feit kan op verschillende manieren worden verwoord:

• de parkeerplaats is te klein;
• er komen teveel mensen met de auto;
• de auto’s zijn te groot;
• de indeling van de parkeerplaats is niet efficiënt.

De initiatieven binnen onze beroepsgroep buitelen over elkaar heen. Overzicht ontbreekt. Samenwerking kan beter. Een oproep om samen te werken aan een meer transparante architectuur binnen onze beroepsgroep en daarmee nieuwe mogelijkheden te creëren voor verdere professionalisering.

The Dutch mortgage-market has experienced significant changes during the last decade. Several aspects led to a shift in market share from the banks to intermediary organizations. As a response to this development, Topicus teamed up with a few intermediary organizations and developed an application that offers support for the workflow in the intermediary organization. This system, Finture, is developed based on the FORCE framework. The main functional goal of Finture is to offer complete support for the intermediary’s primary process, as well as all interactions with its chain-partners. In realizing this goal, Topicus questioned how Finture’s role in the intermediary’s primary process could be improved and extended. This question is the main research question in this research. ...

Vandaag, donderdag 12 februari 2009, is uitgeroepen tot world Darwin day. Het is namelijk 200 jaar geleden dat deze wetenschapper is geboren. Ter ere daarvan heeft Google vandaag zelfs haar logo hierop afgestemd.

Requirements Engineering as a scientific discipline has matured over the last decade, the process itself is rather well understood and led to numerous of techniques and models. Lately, the term requirements management has become more important. Requirements Management adds traceability to the requirements engineering process and artefacts. Although requirements management is a fairly well understood discipline, in practice companies still have questions and issues how to deal with requirements. This report describes a method that will guide practitioners through the requirements engineering process and show how to incorporate traceability into that process. It also describes tool support and how to model requirements.

Wim Walter, oud-CIO PGGM en tegenwoordig Chief Marketing Officer bij de uitvoeringsorganisatie PGGM¹ kijkt tevreden terug op een zeer omvangrijke migratie naar Microsoft dot.Net. Tijdens deze zeer omvangrijke consolidatieslag is hem een aantal dingen duidelijk geworden: je moet keuzes durven maken, hier vervolgens aan vasthouden en als IT-organisatie altijd samen optrekken met de business. Bovendien heeft Walter de grote waarde van architectuur leren inzien.

How will the market model for the energy market develop? How can the youth wellbeing in all its complexity be managed in the Netherlands?

As information architects we aim to arriving somehow at a stable set of principles, domain models or business requirements. But with the complex questions active in the business or organizational architecture, stability is hard to get. And as we are conceptualizers more and more of these questions will hit us hard. We have to be able to define and get hold of these kinds of complex worlds. How do we cope with this?

Soms loop je door de stad en kom je op een pleintje met een doorkijkje waarbij je met stomheid wordt geslagen door de schoonheid ervan. Wat het is? Het is in elk geval moeilijk uit te drukken. Chris McManus, een psycholoog aan het University College in Londen, experimenteert met echte en gewijzigde Modriaans. Deelnemers aan het onderzoek moeten kiezen waar hun voorkeur naar uit gaat. Hoewel de wijzigingen subtiel zijn, geeft 55 tot 60% de voorkeur aan de ‘echte’. Onbewust hebben we een gevoel voor schoonheid en Mondriaan wist dat meesterlijk te raken.

Als gevolg van de steeds verder om zich heen grijpende financiële crisis gaan steeds meer mensen zich onzeker voelen. Houden we onze baan wel? Kunnen we volgend jaar onze hypotheek nog wel betalen? Is er straks nog wel voldoende geld om met pensioen te kunnen? Voor iedereen die het nieuws een beetje volgt zijn dit stuk voor stuk begrijpelijke vragen. En met het nog dagelijks somberder wordende nieuws doemen de contouren van een grote depressie ook inderdaad steeds scherper op. Eerst ging het nog alleen om de financials en de uitzendbureaus – die zijn altijd als eerste de klos. Maar het begint er inmiddels wel heel erg op te lijken dat ook de “reële economie” dit keer hard wordt geraakt. De eerste ontslagen vallen al en de winstwaarschuwingen zijn niet van de lucht. En dat is natuurlijk nog maar het begin. Want dan volgen onvermijdelijk de overheden met bezuinigingen vanwege hogere uitgaven aan werkloosheidsuitkeringen en scherp dalende belastinginkomsten. En dat versterkt de vraaguitval in de reële economie weer. En zie maar weer eens uit zo'n negatieve spiraal te komen.

Je zou er haast zelf een zware herfstdepressie van krijgen...

In 'Leren conceptualiseren van ons vak' schets Hans Vermaak op boeiende wijze hoe hij in 'zijn' vak, als veranderkundig adviseur, tegen conceptualiseren aankijkt. Voor informatiekundigen is dit mijns inziens verplichte kost! De modellen die hij hierbij te berde brengt zijn 1-op-1 over te nemen in onze praktijk. Als Informatiekundigen zijn we 'conceptualizers'. Iedere informatiekundige vraag kan, per definitie, alleen door conceptualiseren worden opgelost. Dat we daar niet altijd even bewust mee omgaan laat onverlet dat ieder informatiesysteem in essentie een conceptualisering van een stukje wereldbeeld is.

De wereld is vol grenzen. Grenzen tussen landen, provincies en gemeentes; maar ook grenzen tussen afdelingen, divisies, bedrijven; grenzen tussen de sociale ruimte, de digitale ruimte en de fysieke ruimte; grenzen tussen portalen, werkstroombesturing, integratieservices en transactieverwerkende systemen en ga zo maar door. Er zijn mensen die het best gedijen binnen een duidelijk afgebakend verantwoordelijkheidsgebied. Grenzen scheppen immers duidelijkheid. Je hebt collega's en concurrenten; allochtonen en autochtonen; software en hardware. Er zijn ook mensen die niet zo in tegenstellingen denken. Mensen die vooral geïnteresseerd zijn in zaken die een afgebakend probleemgebied overstijgen. Mensen die van nature zien dat ook simpele problemen vaak meerdere facetten hebben, waardoor het soms tergend ingewikkeld is om een werkbare oplossing te bedenken – laat staan te realiseren – en daar van kunnen genieten. In principe zijn ze in een organisatie allebei even waardevol – ze vullen elkaar prima aan. Maar je kunt het ook overdrijven...

‘This is the third day without website and e-mail! Do you guys not understand the consequences of running a business without e-mail these days?!’ Last week I had to call my internet provider for lack of service. And that was not without emotions.

I realized then and there that one of the consequences of entering the conceptual age will be that we have to be able to conceptualize and use emotions. In information systems this will be needed to enhance human-machine interaction but also to reason with it in those systems. As I see it now, that could even become an infrastructural component, as I expect time, accountability en context will also. You need it in that case to represent the emotional feelings related to other data. E.g. to represent ‘Client X is devastated as the bank has made her sell her house’.

De bonusprovisie voor assurantietussenpersonen wordt met ingang van volgend jaar afgeschaft. Zoveel is nu wel zeker. Bos heeft gesproken, er is hier en daar nog wat plichtmatig verzet, maar er lijkt ook veel berusting. Het zat er ook al zo lang aan te komen. Dan is op een zeker moment de tijd aangebroken om de spreekwoordelijke wonden te likken en weer vooruit te kijken.

Er wordt in de branche al volop geëxperimenteerd met alternatieve beloningsmodellen voor intermediairs. Het is op dit moment nog te vroeg om te bepalen wat goed aanslaat en wat niet. Wellicht kunnen we in de tussentijd op basis van een gezond historisch besef toch alvast wat lessen trekken...

The paper provides the rationale and concept for integration of models and modeling objects of Business, IT Strategy, Enterprise Architecture and Project Management. The cohesion between and within Business and IT is achieved by means of services. Among other applications this concept justifies inclusion of Enterprise Architecture as perspective in Balanced Scorecards used for IT Strategy management and measurement. Then the relations between BSC objects and EA objects can be maintained in a single modeling repository thus providing an integrated environment for methods, processes, models and variants of objects and enabling holistic strategy, project and architecture management.

SOA4SOA is the solution

Only extraterrestrials just arrived from outer space can have missed the fact that we are in a global economic recession right now. Maybe it will blow over soon, but many expect worse conditions ahead. Organizations prepare for a period with very little room to maneuver. Revenue is drying up and the only way to make a profit is to cut cost and wait for better times. Projects are stopped as it is recognized their business cases are no longer valid. This includes many SOA initiatives, even when based on solid business cases at the time. Only projects that directly reduce cost in a very short term are started or kept alive....

Architecten kunnen zich volgens René Steenvoorden nogal eens verliezen in discussies over definities of het schijnbaar nodeloos categoriseren van functionaliteitseisen. “Ze zijn soms supereigenwijs”, oordeelt de Essent-CIO, die binnenkort zal overstappen naar de Rabobank. En bovendien: “Elke IT’er die je extra bij de discussie zet brengt je één niveau dieper in de details. Bij architecten werkt dat kwadratisch.” Desondanks is René Steenvoorden bloedserieus als het gaat over digitale architectuur.

What would we information architects give for an elegant or fitting worldview or world knowledge in a business domain? Faust, the protagonist of the book of the same name by Goethe, was willing to give his soul for that. And Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, could know that is the consequence. Besides lawyer, poet, humanist and literature writer he was a scientist with a new research method. A research method we can, in my opinion, use as information architects.

My colleague Ruud van Vliet has presented the future of the information architect on LAC2008. One of his observations is that an information architect must be able to juggle with many worldviews at the same time. He must see many aspects of a universe of discourse at once, from several angles.

This calls for a holistic view and synthesis processes. But that is easier said than done. Is the human mind capable of doing this? Can I do this by looking swiftly at one aspect in detail, then switching to an other aspect, such that traces of the first view stay in memory for a while? And how do I present and base the results to stakeholders?

‘How the DEMO methodology can be a valuable addition to a testing framework’

Because many errors still exist in information systems for organizations, professional companies like CEPO are needed for testing information systems on their fit to the organization. To do so, one usually applies a testing framework. The existing (CEPO-way) framework is the result of ten years of experience....

Software systems are continuously evolved to enhance or correct functionality of earlier releases, to integrate new requirements, or to adopt new technologies. Many of the software systems in use today have been developed over multiple iterations and several years by teams that changed over time or handed over their work. As a result, such systems have become inherently complex, difficult to understand and costly to modify and evolve. Common techniques for addressing complexity and for improving comprehensibility of software systems include modularization of concerns and structuring of the code by applying well-established design patterns....

Voor Achmea-Group Information Officer (GIO) Eric Sluis strekt het digitale architectuurdenken zich uit over het totale speelveld van het bedrijf: producten, diensten, processen, informatie, systemen, de technische infrastructuur en zelfs de structuur van de organisatie. “Wat ik wil is een integrale visie op ons bedrijf, nu en straks, en op de transformatie die we doormaken. En daar zitten dus al die verschillende aspecten aan.”

Hennie Wesseling, CIO bij TNT Post, heeft vanaf het jaar 2000 de aanbodkant van de IT als een bedrijf georganiseerd. “Op die manier maak je namelijk alles transparant en voorkom je de discussie dat IT te duur is.” Destijds is bovendien besloten om de digitale architectuur bottom-up, vanuit de infrastructuur, op poten te zetten. “Je begint dan namelijk vanuit een gebied dat je als IT’er zelf kunt besturen, in plaats van dat je telkens in het vaarwater van de business komt. Onze ervaring is dat deze benadering werkt.”

The main goal of this thesis is to describe the relation between SOA and BI, by providing an overview of the opportunities and limitations of using BI in an organization that adopts SOA for building its applications. Opportunities describe how the adoption of SOA can improve the use of BI. Limitations describe the constraints of these opportunities, and the limitations of traditional approaches to BI on SOA applications. The opportunities and limitations are described in concepts and technologies, of which the technological description will be mainly described by the resulting software architecture. Since the academic literature on this subject is rather thin, this research poses to establish a useful source of information to those practitioners and academics working and learning in the field of BI, who are interested in the developments of BI.

In rapidly changing markets it is of primary importance for organisations to be able to cooperate in a flexible manner with diverse external partners. in such a joint venture it is readily required to integrate business processes and their associated IT support.

This research approaches the service register as an Information Intermediary. This enables the use of design theories which not only focuses on the technical aspects of delivering the right description to the user, but also the organizational processes and procedures to support this. The result is an attempt for creating an effective design for a service register.

The SABSA (Sherwood Applied Business Security Architecture) framework has evolved as a "best practice" method for delivering cohesive information security solutions to enterprises.

SABSA is a six-layer model covering all four parts of the IT lifecycle: Strategy, Design, Implementation and Management & Operations.

SABSA ensures the security needs of your enterprise are met completely and that security services are designed, delivered, and supported as an integral part of your IT Management infrastructure.