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Fancied,
conceived and shaped objects in Information Systems
Michel LEONARD, Professor, Université
de Genève, Switzerland
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Michel
LEONARD has been Full Professor of the University of Geneva since
1977 in the Information System domain. He is the Head of the IS
department of this University.
His main interest is the analysis of converging aspects between
the conceptual models, the Information and Communication technology
world and the activities world inside the IS field. With his research
team he developed several DBMSs with advanced features such as dynamic
specialization, hyperclasses, complete flexibility of the database
schema. Presently he manages a research team to develop the Open
Source M7 environment to support an evolutionary IS approach, management
and implementation of Information System components, fragments of
IS methods, knowledge management.
He is the author of the book "Database design theory"
(MacMillan 1992).
He
is member of the CAISE committee board, the IFIP TC8 Working Group
and the ICEIS committee.
He was the general chairman of the last Object-Oriented Information
System conference (Geneva, September 2003). |
Michel.Leonard@cui.unige.ch
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| Abstract |
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This
paper is an attempt to develop some fundamental aspects of Information
Systems domain, which are generally hidden or misunderstood. Generally
speaking an IS is generally considered only for its shaped objects
: in the first hand, programs, methods, classes, systems, and
in the second hand, interfaces, rules, processes, workflows
In fact, to produce so shaped objects, the IS development process
needs to elaborate conceived objects. But the utility of these
conceived objects are often limited in the private space of experts.
Nevertheless this paper claims that their utility is much more
important and their usability will become very crucial in the
IS engineering. Furthermore and finally, the fancied objects are
hidden in the most often cases : they appear only through objectives,
that the IS should fulfil : so the IS development process would
be only a problem solving process. However, many papers show that
there is a deep gap between the management domain and the computer
technical domain. Many of them try to build a bridge between these
domains. This paper claims that the IS domain cannot be reduced
to a simple bridge and the difficulties of the enterprises with
their development with IS cannot be solved following this way.
The only level where managers and computer specialists can cooperate
with a minor risk of manipulation, appears to be the level of
fancied objects. Then the overloaded complexity due to lazy positions
in IS development disappears. The IS utility-usability becomes
real stakes. Furthermore IS development process becomes a collective
creative process, where IS becomes the means of expressing a collective
sense to cope with complexity. Finally the paper illustrates this
position through the example of the agile information systems
(in particular with the M7 open source project).
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