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Using patterns in conceptual modeling of business activities

University of British Columbia

Patterns are used as building blocks for design and construction in many fields such as architecture, music, literature, etc. Researchers and practitioners in the information systems area have been exploring patterns and using them in system analysis and design. Patterns found in the analysis stage, when analysts create conceptual models to abstractly represent domain reality, are call business patterns or analysis patterns. Although various business patterns were proposed in previous studies, we found that business semantics were missing in these patterns. These business patterns failed to show functionalities that is essential to patterns in general. Most of these patterns were also not capable of describing business activities, the dynamic aspect of business. This study is conducted to address these issues. In this thesis, we provide a brief literature review on business patterns, and discuss the major problems we found in these studies. Then we introduce our research approach and the major outcomes. We propose a new definition of business patterns with business semantics, which enables us to recover the missing functionality in business patterns. We suggest the key elements to represent business patterns, and propose a two-level template (functional and operational) to describe these elements. Based on theR²M approach, we propose a modeling method with graphical notations to describe the operational level of patterns, where business activities can be modeled. Examples and a case study are provided in this thesis to demonstrate how to use the modeling method and how to use business patterns in practice.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-02-02

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/4081

Business Administration - Management Information Systems

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/