Modeling the information systems architecture: an object-oriented approach

Presents an object-oriented design approach for modeling an information systems architecture (ISA). An ISA is a plan for modeling the global information requirements of an enterprise and provides a way to map the information needs of an organization, relate them to specific processes and document their interrelationships. This mapping is then used to guide applications development and to facilitate the integration and sharing of data. To facilitate these functions, an object-oriented modeling system (ELISA) is introduced in which the primitives of the ISA correspond to the natural language used by managers and executives. The research reported is a prototype design that focuses on a representation, storage, access, and manipulation scheme of enterprise meta-data. A repository system is described for the storage of information required by the ISA. An example shows how an object representation of the ISA is applied to the information requirements of a small business. Directions for further research are also discussed