Companies model their business processes either for docu- mentation, analysis, re-engineering or automation purposes; usually us- ing normalized business process modeling languages such as EPC or BPMN. Although these models explain how... more
Companies model their business processes either for docu- mentation, analysis, re-engineering or automation purposes; usually us- ing normalized business process modeling languages such as EPC or BPMN. Although these models explain how the processes should be per- formed and by whom, they abstract away their business rationale (i.e. what is offered and why). Business modeling aims to answer the latter and different frameworks have been proposed to express the process in terms of value-chains. Ensuring alignment between both of these views manually is error prone and labor intensive. In this paper, we present a novel approach to derive a value-chain - expressed in REA - from a busi- ness process model expressed in BPMN. At the heart of our approach and our main contribution lies a set of nine general business patterns we have defined and classified as structural and behavioral patterns.
A number of modeling approaches have been proposed in the literature for designing business information systems. This paper critiques prior data modeling approaches and presents an integrated object-oriented modeling approach that... more
A number of modeling approaches have been proposed in the literature for designing business information systems. This paper critiques prior data modeling approaches and presents an integrated object-oriented modeling approach that captures both the structural and the behavioral aspects of the business domain. Although there is considerable interest in object-oriented (OO) technologies in practice and in the information systems literature, there is no widely accepted OO modeling approach that facilitates the identification of objects from a business information processing perspective. Based on McCarthy’s (1982) resources, events, agents (REA) framework, the business process focused object-oriented ontology presented in this paper identifies the key resources, events, and agents in an enterprise information systems context. Termed OOREA, the ontology extends McCarthy’s REA model by capturing both the structural aspects of modeling, in terms of the objects of interest in the domain, an...
Revenue Information System (RiS) is the product of a research project based on a case study on direct-selling sales point. This study is to determine the resources, events, and agents for Resource-Event-Agent (REA) data model as a... more
Revenue Information System (RiS) is the product of a research project based on a case study on direct-selling sales point. This study is to determine the resources, events, and agents for Resource-Event-Agent (REA) data model as a technique of specifying and designing accounting information system and also to develop a system prototype based on the REA model. RiS is built based on the REA data model since it captures only essential aspects of economic phenomena. The idea is to build an information system application that supports business process in real-time and the REA data model is chosen to ease the understanding of the database. In this paper, the researchers described the approach and process in planning and performing the project transformation and conversion from the legacy information systems to the new updated information system. The researchers applied the REA model approach and process into a real case study of sales order and cash receipt systems. The result shows that REA model captures only essential aspects of economic phenomena and thus, (1) models are kept concise and easy to understand, (2) models can be used for many applications, and (3) derived artefacts are always consistent by means of the models. This new developed system has resulted in the improvement in business processes efficiency, the timely collection of cash and the provision of timely account information for decision making. Database design in business information system structured by accountants and those who are involved in the business itself will create a meaningful system as their business needs are fulfilled.
Current Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are based on double entry bookkeeping. This technique has several disadvantages concerning application neutral financial data storage. Therefore, the Resource Event Agent (REA) ontology... more
Current Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are based on double entry bookkeeping. This technique has several disadvantages concerning application neutral financial data storage. Therefore, the Resource Event Agent (REA) ontology was introduced to negotiate the current drawbacks. It describes concepts and its relationships semantically. Nevertheless, there exist a set of different REA models that reveal several lacks in context of
Business process modeling is an important activity for both organizational design and for the planning and analysis of information systems that support an organization’s business processes. Our goal is to help business analysts produce... more
Business process modeling is an important activity for both organizational design and for the planning and analysis of information systems that support an organization’s business processes. Our goal is to help business analysts produce detailed models of the business processes that best reflect the needs of their organizations. To this end, we propose to, a) leverage the best practices in terms of a catalog of generic business processes, and b) provide analysts with tools to customize those processes by generating new process variants around automatically identified process variants. We use business patterns from the Resource Event Agent ontology to identify variation points, and to codify the model transformations inherent in the generation of the process variants. We developed a prototype, showing the compu- tational feasibility of the approach, and validated the relevance of the variation points, and the correctness of corresponding transformations in the context of ERP key processes, showing the conceptual soundness of the approach.
Current Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are based on double entry bookkeeping. This technique has several disadvantages concerning application neutral financial data storage. Therefore, the Resource Event Agent (REA) ontology... more
Current Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are based on double entry bookkeeping. This technique has several disadvantages concerning application neutral financial data storage. Therefore, the Resource Event Agent (REA) ontology was introduced to negotiate the current drawbacks. It describes concepts and its relationships semantically. Nevertheless, there exist a set of different REA models that reveal several lacks in context of formalization and specification. Although several REA approaches use formalized languages like the Unified Modeling Language (UML), they are too general to fulfill the Guidelines of Modeling. Due to these reasons, the paper adapts the SEManticbased Planning Approach (SEMPA) for a formalized REA modeling. By annotating process activities semantically, the approach emphasizes on business control. Furthermore, process activities are linked together representing all valid solutions of a process flow representing behavioral aspects of REA. The goal is to...
Business domain ontologies offer great opportunities for f acilitating communication between people in business, for improving the enterprise system engineering processes and for creating interoperabili ty between enterprise systems.... more
Business domain ontologies offer great opportunities for f acilitating communication between people in business, for improving the enterprise system engineering processes and for creating interoperabili ty between enterprise systems. However despite these opportunities, their use in practice is still limited. This can be partly attributed to the lack of formal representation of these ontologies. This paper proposes a structured approach
Revenue Information System (RiS) is the product of a research project based on a case study on direct-selling sales point. This study is to determine the resources, events, and agents for Resource-Event-Agent (REA) data model as a... more
Revenue Information System (RiS) is the product of a research project based on a case study on direct-selling sales point. This study is to determine the resources, events, and agents for Resource-Event-Agent (REA) data model as a technique of specifying and designing accounting information system and also to develop a system prototype based on the REA model. RiS is built based on the REA data model since it captures only essential aspects of economic phenomena. The idea is to build an information system application that supports business process in real-time and the REA data model is chosen to ease the understanding of the database. In this paper, the researchers described the approach and process in planning and performing the project transformation and conversion from the legacy information systems to the new updated information system. The researchers applied the REA model approach and process into a real case study of sales order and cash receipt systems. The result shows that ...
Abstract. Business modelling can be used as a starting point for business analysis. The core of a business model is information about resources, events, agents, and their relations. The motivation of a business model can be found in the... more
Abstract. Business modelling can be used as a starting point for business analysis. The core of a business model is information about resources, events, agents, and their relations. The motivation of a business model can be found in the goals of an enterprise and those are made explicit in a goal model. This paper discusses the alignment of business models with goal models and proposes a method for constructing business models based on goal models. The method assists in the design of business models that conform to the explicit ...
The Resources-Events-Agents (REA) model is a semantic data model for the development and integration of conceptual schemas of accounting information systems. Although in the Accounting Information Systems literature, the REA model is... more
The Resources-Events-Agents (REA) model is a semantic data model for the development and integration of conceptual schemas of accounting information systems. Although in the Accounting Information Systems literature, the REA model is proposed as a benchmark against which to evaluate newly proposed accounting data models, only few studies have been undertaken to empirically validate the claimed benefits of REA modeling.
Organizations build information systems to support their business processes. Some of these business processes are industry or organization-specific, but most are common to many industries and are used as is, modulo a few modifications.... more
Organizations build information systems to support their business processes. Some of these business processes are industry or organization-specific, but most are common to many industries and are used as is, modulo a few modifications. Our work tries to capitalize on these similarities to develop a methodology and tools that help business analysts generate organization-specific process models from a catalog of generic business processes. We developed a framework for representing and classifying business processes that supports process vari- ability management by, 1) navigating a repository of generic processes, and 2) automatically generating new process variants around key process variation points. We use business patterns from the Resource Event Agent ontology to identify variation points, and to codify the model transformations inherent in the generation of the process variants. We developed a prototype, showing the computational feasibility of the approach, and vali- dated the relevance of the variation points, and the correctness of corresponding transformations in the context of ERP key processes, showing the conceptual soundness of the approach.
This work furthers the work in Transaction Agent Modelling (TrAM) by merging its conceptual catalogue based on the REA (Resources-Events-Agents) accounting model with Sowa's 1984 conceptual catalogue. The merged catalogue features in... more
This work furthers the work in Transaction Agent Modelling (TrAM) by merging its conceptual catalogue based on the REA (Resources-Events-Agents) accounting model with Sowa's 1984 conceptual catalogue. The merged catalogue features in a preliminary implementation of TrAM using the Amine software tool, which also offers the model-checking support that is core to TrAM. This automated process demonstrates how Conceptual Graphs (CG) might lucidly interrelate the divergent conceptual catalogues of the myriad domains in which contemporary enterprise systems operate.
In this paper we review and discuss some recent attempts at ontological re-engineering of REA in the light of the UFO ontology and the OntoUML language, focusing in particular on different choices concerning the UFO notion of relator. We... more
In this paper we review and discuss some recent attempts at ontological re-engineering of REA in the light of the UFO ontology and the OntoUML language, focusing in particular on different choices concerning the UFO notion of relator. We also take this as an opportunity to clarify and revise Guarino and Guizzardi's general theory of reification and truthmaking proposed in the past.
This paper presents a laboratory experiment that evaluates the REA approach for modelling enterprise-wide accounting information systems. REA is a pattern-driven conceptual modelling approach that is based on the Resource-Event-Agent... more
This paper presents a laboratory experiment that evaluates the REA approach for modelling enterprise-wide accounting information systems. REA is a pattern-driven conceptual modelling approach that is based on the Resource-Event-Agent semantic model of a company’s accountability infrastructure. Using a between-subjects experiment with business students we investigated whether Entity-Relationship (ER) diagrams that show a REA pattern occurrence are better understood than
The Resources-Events-Agents (REA) model is a semantic data model for the development of enterprise information systems. Although this model has been proposed as a benchmark for enterprise information modelling, only few studies have... more
The Resources-Events-Agents (REA) model is a semantic data model for the development of enterprise information systems. Although this model has been proposed as a benchmark for enterprise information modelling, only few studies have attempted to empirically validate the claimed benefits of REA modelling. Moreover, these studies focused on the evaluation of REA-based system implementations rather than directly assessing the REA-modelled conceptual schemas that these systems are based on. This paper presents a laboratory experiment that measured the user understanding of diagrammatic conceptual schemas developed using the REA model. The theoretical foundation for the hypotheses are cognitive theories that explain pattern recognition phenomena and the resulting reduction in cognitive effort for understanding conceptual schemas. The results of the experiment indicate a more accurate understanding of the business processes and policies modelled when users recognize the REA model’s core pattern of enterprise information in the diagram. The implication for modelling practice is that the use of the REA model improves the requirements engineering process by facilitating the user validation of conceptual schemas produced by analysts, and thus helps ensuring the quality of the enterprise information system that is developed or implemented.
