Ensuring consistency of information systems rules models

Abstract

Business rules make an important and integral part of each information system (IS) by expressing business logic, constraints of concepts, and their interpretation and relationships. Therefore it is relevant to pay special attention to business rules in development of information systems. Rules related to domain structure and behaviour are presented in data, states, processes and other IS models. Taking into account that rules are expressed in several models, there is a risk that overall specification is inconsistent. Unambiguous models are crucial for the successful implementation of IS models transformation and finally code generation tasks. Therefore it is necessary to check consistency among related rules models. The problem of models inconsistency can be solved by using of formal or partially formal models with constraints. However formal models are often too complex to be used in practice. Semi-formal models are widely used, but constraints used in such a models often are suitable only for one model and relationships among models are not defined. Hence the author of paper suggests extending of IS approach based on semi-formal models and constraints, by adding the consistency rues for IS models. The proposed approach is illustrated by a case study.