INCOME/STAR: Methodology and tools for the development of distributed information systems

Abstract

INCOME/STAR is an experimental environment for the cooperative development of distributed information systems. This paper presents some of INCOME/STAR's innovative features in the area of information systems engineering:First a new type of high-level Petri nets, so-called Nested Relation/Transition nets (NR/Tnets), is described. NR/T-nets allow the modeling of concurrent processes and related complex structured objects in distributed business applications.New concepts for entity and relationship clustering were developed to support a stepwise topdown approach for Entity/Relationship based object modeling. Distributed multi-user simulation and prototyping are used for the evaluation and analysis of NR/T-nets and the involved object schema.Finally, ProMISE -an evolutionary process model for information system development -is introduced. A role-based groupware component is part of the INCOME/STAR architecture to support communication, organization and social interaction in development projects.

Deliberation in a metadata-based modeling and simulation environment for inter-organizational networks

“…2 For example, the SeSAM tool developed in this context shares many features with the AgentSheets approach, but allows more complex process specifications instead of simple rules as ways of reaction to events [36]. In a similar direction, van der Aalst et al [37] have recently proposed to generalize their Petri net models to a peer-to-peer setting in which each partner can define private workflows which then expose certain public interfaces through which they can be coordinated to an overall cross-organizational workflow.…”

“…As a recent well-known example, van der Aalst and colleagues [17,18] propose the usage of Petri nets not only for workflow simulation but also for other kinds of formal analysis of workflow. This builds on a long tradition of Petri net based process analysis, including the INCOME model from the mid1990s [2] which has been widely used commercially in connection with Oracle's family of database design tools.…”

“…Some of these [1][2][3] support the simulation of such processes thus enabling the assessment of the effects of different business strategies.…”

Towards quality-aware development and evolution of enterprise information systems

“…Today, each of these areas has a particular notion of quality and comes with rather isolated methodologies and tools for managing it. For example, there are business process management suites like [9][10] and tools for the early evaluation of a software architecture's performance like [11] [12]. However, these approaches are typically used in isolation.…”

Validation of information system models: Petri nets and test case generation

“…The work is part of a project called VIP (Verification of Information systems by evaluating partially ordered Petri net runs) [2]. We use the concept in an information system development environment called INCOME/STAR, which was designed and implemented as a research prototype at the University of Karlsruhe [8].…”