Representing real-world processes

Traditional modelling languages from the information systems field are inappropriate for capturing real-world dynamics because they put more emphasis on the modelling of static aspects than dynamic aspects, or because they are usually limited to modelling information processing, not the processing of material. This paper addresses the detailed representation real-world processing at the lowest level of decomposition in dynamic models. A new conceptual framework is presented for this. The framework utilises the well-known abstraction mechanisms from semantic data modelling: aggregation, generalisation, and association, but now for a dynamic purpose, i.e., to model actions performed on objects instead of the objects themselves. The framework integrates detailed representation of material processing and information processing