Systemic Semiotic Design Practice:

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BUSS 951
Critical Issues in Information
Systems
Lecture 7
Systems for Organisations 1:
Informative Technologies
Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-07:
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Notices (1)
General
 Unfortunately I was not able to be available for consultations
during Thursday today as I have another commitment in
Sydney. I have set up a replacement consultation time for
Monday 14:30-16:30 (for one week only)
 I am consequently one day late in marking and due to other
teaching commitments cannot restart this work until the
weekend- I will hopefully have the Assignment 1s available
during the replacement consultation time
 Make sure you have a copy of Assignment 2
 BUSS951 is supported by a website (available from
Tomorrow), where you can find out the latest Notices and get
Lecture Notes, Tutorial Sheets, Assignments etc
www.uow.edu.au/~rclarke/buss951/buss951.htm
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Notices (2)
Readings for Week 7
1. Carroll, J. M. (1991) “Introduction: The
Little House Manifesto” Reading 11
2. Landauer, T. K. (1991) “Lets Get Real: A
Position Paper on the Role of Cognitive
Psychology in the Design of Humanly
Useful and Usable Systems” Reading 11
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Notices (3)
Readings for Week 8
1. Yu, E. (1998) “Why agent-oriented
requirments engineering” Reading 6
2. Yu, E. S. K and J. Mylopoulos (1994)
“From E-R’ to A-R’- Modelling Strategic
Actor Relationshiups for Business
Process Reengineering” Reading 7
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Agenda (1)
 Technological Changes
 Evolution of IS
 Layered Architectures: Separation of presentation,
application and data
 Distributed Applications
 Security and Personalisation
 Data Processing Critical Issues




Layered Architectures and Planning Problems
Diversification of Skills
Tower of Babel
Standardisation versus Innovation
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Technological Changes
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Technological Changes (1)
Data Processing & Information Management
 in the 1990s much of the data processing scene
has been transformed from that even since the
1970s and 80s (refer to Mowshowitz 1976
Reading 1)
 particularly,
 the kinds of technologies that were used to process
data, and
 the manner in which data was processing by
organisations,
 who gets to actually perform these duties that is EDP
centres, data centres, outsourcers, ISPs and/or ASPs
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Technological Changes (2)
Concepts & Statements differ- same Theory!
 there is now a dominant trend in considering work and
its management from the point-of-view of knowledge
work…
 …the reality is that the knowledge work being referred
to follows exactly the same logic identified earlier in
our lecture on information
 we are still dealing with the problems inherent with
Shannon & Weaver but we still cannot see a way clear
of it despite valiant attempts to consider for example
‘valued information’- something Shannon & Weaver is
incapable of theorising as it does not deal with
meanings (semantics) at all
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Technological Changes (3)
Current IT developed decades ago
 current technological deployment is based on theory
that is new very old
 1960s technology relied on batch processing, in the
1970s the technology was dependent on the
timesharing systems
 however in the 1980s there were two significant
developments- networking architectures and
microprocessor based systems- however attempts to
combine these technologies were ineffective
 Reasons: many but it is true that users often preferred
the independence from IT management control that
personal computing power provided
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Technological Changes (4)
Development of Client/Server Architectures …
 Client/server technology is a form of distributed
processing where an application is split in a way
that allows a front end (the client) to request
services of a back end (server)
 Client/server technologies enable the possibility of
having users interact with an application running on
a mainframe, minicomputer or network server while
the front end runs on their PC
 Of course the real impetus behind the adoption of
this technology is the Internet and corporate
Intranets- the web browser becomes a universal
client (web pages, mail, ftp, server applications,
search …)
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Technological Changes (5)
Client/Server Architecture: Motivations
 Management
 Better equipment utilisation
 Utilising technical workers better
 Utilising non-technical workers better
 Better products and services
 Technological Advances
 Microprocessors- powerful systems
 Graphics- at the client side
 Network Operating Systems and LANs
 Software Development Tools- CASE tools can support it
 Standards- are required to develop new, sophisticated
applications required by client/server computing
often IT companies sabotage standards in order to
retain market share!- Critical Issue
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Technological Changes (6)
Client/Server Architecture: Advantages
 Off-loading Mainframes
 Improved Data Integrity
 Reduced Network Traffic
 Searches are processed on the workstation not on the traditional file
server- followed by a sequence of record level requests made to the
 alternatively with Client/server style database server the search
request is packages and shipped to the database server where it
executes. When complete, the search results are sent back to the
workstation as a unit
 Reduced Application Development
 Reusability
 Portations
 Developer Interdependence
 Reduced Cost
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Technological Changes (7)
Client/Server Architecture: Advantages
 Complexity: applications are separated into several pieces
that must communicate with each other across a network,
client/server computing is inherently more complex that
traditional data processing
 Lack of Standards: require overwhelming support- the
problem as I perceive it is largely at the management levels
of both the adopting organisations, and the marketing
practices of managers in large IT companies (Problems
between Sun and Microsoft in relation to Java- hardly
isolated- see latter)
 Resource Intensiveness: very similar issues to the
marketing practices of large IT companies who lock users
out of the competition by developing proprietary standards
(IBM was doing this in the 1960s- nothing has changed
here!)
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Technological Changes (8)
Distributed Processing/Applications
 the concept of distributed processing,
distributing pieces of one software program
entity across a number of processing systems,
has been around since the 1970s and is was a
direct influence on the development of ISO and
IBMs SNA Architecture
 end users at the application level demand more than the
computing power available at their fingertips
 more localised controllable types of applications have
been spreading rapidly…
 …but are now becoming entangled with the problems
faced by Wide Area Network (WAN) routing and
management
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Technological Changes (9)
Machine Architectures & System Software
any two processors using different
architectures are by definition incompatible
and software developed on one will need to be
ported and compiled on the other system- in
fact this kind of incompatibility was and still is
encouraged by all parties
this is even the case with universal or standard
software systems- any deviation is likely to
affect compatibility and every system
deviates… software rusts
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Technological Changes (10)
System Software Incompatibilities
 even standards like UNIX which were meant to
get around these problems have been subject to
this kind of problem, example which flavour of
UNIX (AIX, Xenix, ULTRIX, At&T, Berkeley flavours
 this incompatibility even extends to PC based
versions, RedHat, Corel Linux, Caldera
OpenLinux, Mandrake Linux etc
 even now there is still efforts at trying to get a
core kernel for Linux, and to allow other
producers like RedHat etc to package their
distributions with whatever they want as long as
they adhere to minimum standards for the kernel
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Technological Changes (11)
Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs)
 there are a number of accepted ways to deal with the
heterogeneous distributed systems- one popular
way is to use Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs)
 Procedures are not only characteristic of distributed
system about are also used within standalone nondistributed programs
 A procedure, function, or subroutine is a well defined
program segment that performs a task or set of
tasks and has a well-defined interface so that other
program segments can use it
 RPCs extend this technique of intramachine
procedure calls into intermachine procedure calls
required in distributed processing
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Technological Changes (12)
RPCs and Distributed Processing
 RPCs differ from local calls (used in subroutines etc) in
that the address spaces for the caller procedure and the
called procedure are located on separate machines
which might be located on separate LANs or WANs
 the calling mechanism at the RPC client passes
arguments and control to an RPC server via
communications software
 similar software to used client side receives the
information and simulates a local call to the intended
procedure at the RPC server
 when the procedure is completed the communication
software on the server returns any output data to the
original caller
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Evolution of IS
Data from Marchand (1990)
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Evolution of IS
A Managerial Historical View (c.1960s)
Competitive Thrust
Technical Efficiency
 IS Strategy
 Maximization of
throughput
 Seeking of economies of
scale
 Technology in search of
solutions
 IS systems
 High-volume mainframe
applications
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Evolution of IS
A Managerial Historical View (c.1970s)
Competitive Thrust
Cost Reduction
 IS Strategy
 Reduction of overhead
 Support function:
back office operation
 IS systems
 Transaction processing
 Administrative systems
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Evolution of IS
A Managerial Historical View (c.1960s)
Competitive Thrust
Office Effectiveness
 IS Strategy
 Networking
 End-user computing
 IS emerging from the
back office
 IS systems
 Technology architecture
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Evolution of IS
A Managerial Historical View (c.1990s)
Competitive Thrust
Flexibility
 IS Strategy
 Leveraging of
technology architecture
 IS supporting business
thrust
 IS systems
 Tailored work station
 Knowledge-based
technology
 Multimedia environment
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Evolution of IS
Critical Evaluation (1)
 actually although there are some elements of
truth to the slides just presented - a common
enough representation of some of the salient
issues - it should not be construed as a correct
interpretation of events as we shall see
 for instance how likely do you think it is that
management had a major rethink about IS on
January 1st of every decade for four decades
consecutively!- if you believe that go buy a
lottery ticket!
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Evolution of IS
Critical Evaluation (2)
 in this case that somehow under the guiding
hand of ‘information management’
organisations came to improve their
understand of what makes for the good
application of technology
 terms like ‘effectiveness’ smooth over a rather
unsavoury corporate history of unemployment,
downsizing, and corporate raiding that took
place in Australia for example
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Evolution of IS
Critical Evaluation (3)
 the items which characterise different
decades are highly selective- for example
you simply do not find much interest in
multimedia systems in organisations
 I know for a fact that in some area of BHP,
no new computing equipment is provided
unless it can be cost justified 150%guaranteeing that they actually buy
something that they need and that they
get the most use out of it
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Evolution of IS
Critical Evaluation (4)
 this kind of presentation and similar kinds
of presentation in IS and management suffer
from a fatal condition known as a post hoc
argument
 a post hoc is the fallacy of assuming that
temporal succession is evidence of a causal
relation
 the same kind of problem happens in
sciences and natural history museums as
well- see Gee (2001)!
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Evolution of IS
Sequential Implicativeness
 in this case even though there seems no
logic implication that causes for “flexibility”
to follow from “office efficiency” the mere act
of locating them one after another creates a
sequential implicativeness
 the author signals their desire to read this table
left to right by placing labels which tell you which
decade your in
 and also by having the last column ‘flexibility’ as a
kind of happy ending- this reveals a deeper true
about how this argument is being constructed...
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Evolution of IS
Narrative Structure of Reality
 as you read from left to right one column
to the next- the ordering becomes
powerful because it literally suggests and
then constructs a narrative (ie. this
happened, then this happened...)
 in what the great Cultural Studies
researcher Stuart Hall calls the narrative
structure of reality
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Information Management
and the Emerging Infomation Economy
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Information Management (1)
 now that we have established that there have
been massive changes in the IS
 although we have strongly critiqued the
management rhetoric which describes these
changes
 it is important to focus now on the role of
information management in organisations we
should expect (and indeed we can easily find)
changes to the concept of information occurring
at the same time as we have the emergence of the
so-called information economy
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Information Management (2)
 is seen as attempting to understand the
many internal & external factors that shape
organisations
 several of these ideas that are currently
central to information management are:
 information and innovation
 learning and adaptation
 addressing value chains- key aspects of the job of
knowledge workers)
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Information Management (3)
current information management
literature describes work in terms of
value chains
must be addressed at both the bottom and
top of business organisations in service
and goods-producing industries
what is considered to link information and
innovation in a business enterprise is the
need to learn and adapt to key forces
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Information Management (4)
 information management services are now
construed as contributing to the learning
activities of the enterprise as they are reflected in
group and individual work processes
 focus on enhancing the value chains of
employees as knowledge workers
 this involves new requirements for sharing
information resources in an enterprise as well as
new ways of:
 coordinating the management functions related to
human resources
 facilities planning information services and systems as
they affect employee performance and productivity
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Information Management (5)
Emergence of the Information Economy...
 information-oriented view of executives and
workers as knowledge workers leads to new
patterns of information use and sharing in
businesses
 so if the information economy is an
international, social, and economic reality,
then what is its impact on business?Marchand (1990) identified the following
responses from managers
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Information Economy’s
Impact on Business
 Characteristics of the Information
Economy
 Information economy is a business
reality
 Knowledge and information are
critical resources to respond to
organised complexity
 The division of laour has shifted from
indiustrial to information workers
 The internation ecomomy is an
international phenomenon
 information processsing industry has
developed as the basic industry of
the information economy
 Effects on Business
 Knowledge is a key factor of
production with capital, people,
and technology
 information transforms
agriculture amd industry
 manufacturing and service
boundaries are blurred
 service sector boundaries are
blurred
 entrepreneurial opportunities
have been created
 information management
evolves as a new business
functions
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Current Views of Information
 the rhetoric changes from information
processing to knowledge work
 we now see a shift in interest away from
considerations data processing and more
effort being expended into understanding
more about what the term ‘information’
might mean
 this promising avenue of research will be
limited by the types of theories that can be
adopted...
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Current Views of Information
Knowledge Work & ‘valued’ Information...
 note the quantitative overtones (minus, equals) together
with the desire to think about information in qualitative
terms (valued information)
information minus
available
information
used
equals
valued
information
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Current Views of Information
Knowledge Work & ‘valued’ Information...
 from a current information management point of view
consideration of information must consider:
 information content or actual knowledge,
 timing or delivery of information
 the quality of the information
 the quantity or scope of the information
 the presentation format or relevance of the information
 the ease of retrieval or actual use oof the information,
and,
 finally the cost of the information to the individual, work
unit, or organisation
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Organisational Implications
Data to Information Based Enterprises
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Organisational Implications
Data to Information Based Enterprises (1)
 we have established that along with a change
in the way IT is employed in organisations
there has also been a commensurate shift in
the way information as a category is described
 now we consider the organisational
implications of the development of information
based enterprises in an information economy
and the effect that this change has on how
organisation and workers are managed
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Organisational Implications
Data to Information Based Enterprises (2)
 of course there have been major changes
that can be seen in what IS are used, how
they are used, who uses them and who
controls them
 what changes are evident in the observed
transformation from data processing to
information based enterprises?
 what implications have these changes had
to the organisations in which they have
been deployed?
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Organisational Implications
Data to Information Based Enterprises (3)
 traditional hierarchical model of
organisation based on control and
compliance does not promote effectively the
focus on service management
 some authors have suggested a reversal of
traditional pyramidal structure and a
substantial downsizing to promote a focus
on customer interaction with front-line
employees where managers of support units
strive to improve the quality of services
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Organisational Implications
Data to Information Based Enterprises (4)
 managerial & organisational differences that
characterise firms in the traditional, industrialbased model -vs- information-based model
 traditional industrial model
 6 to 13 layers of control-oriented, top-down
management
 knowledge resides at the top and is distributed on a
need-to-know basis downward
 functional groupings tend to be rigid and poorly
coordinated except at the top of the organisation
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Organisational Implications
Data to Information Based Enterprises (5)
 hierachical control-oriented
 top down
 knowledge residing at the top
and distributed on a need to
know basis downward
 functional orientation
From
 flatter, repsonsive
 horizontal, focused on the
support of the worker
 shared information, targeted
use of knowledge, expertise,
and technology
 task, market orientation
To
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Organisational Implications
Value Chains of Knowledge Workers (6)
 a few ‘leading-edge firms’ are beginning to define all
their workers as knowledge workers
 due to automation, increasing reliance is placed on
the quality and productivity of the less numerous,
yet more highly skilled production workers in charge
of manufacturing processes
 an interesting possibility is to consider that the
rhetoric of ‘knowledge workers’ is actually being
re/produced solely to reduce costs by employing
fewer workers- just a continuation automation during
the 60s and 70s
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Organisational Implications
Value Chains of Knowledge Workers (7)
 the new knowledge worker becomes the object of
‘value adding’ management practices which views them
as incurs costs and subject to various managerial
practices
worker
+
Human Resources
compensation package
learning/training resources
benefits menu
merit, equity in worker relations
Information M’gmt Division
information uses and needs
sources of information Info Tech Division
types
software availability and use
quality
tailored hardware to work task
presentation format
supportive tech. infrastructure
ease of retrieval
Facilities Dimension
work environment
physical coordination work processes
location/site characteristics
Knowledge Worker
reasoning capabilities
cognitive style
education
experience
personality
motivation
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Organisational Implications
Value Chains of Knowledge Workers (8)
 interestingly, the actual value of the knowledge
workers and the utter depedence of organisations
and managers on their work is rarely
acknowledged
 this erasure is evidence of workers is evident in
the ways management practices address them
(ie. refer to them, think about them etc)
 pay attention to the language that is being iused
in the following dioscussion about ‘knowledge
workers’- what you need to think about is how are
the ‘knowledge workers’ being addressed...
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Organisational Implications
Value Chains of Knowledge Workers (9)
 in general it is viewed as not a good idea to subject
workers to these apparent disjointed activities of
management!
 the literature suggests that this traditional approach to
the management of business processes and workers
(termed disease-oriented treatment) can lower quality
and flexibility enormously ...
 ... and can result in treating the ‘symptoms’ of worker
dissatisfaction and low productivity while being unable
to deal with the causes of such problems
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Organisational Implications
Value Chains of Knowledge Workers (10)
 the alternative that is proposed to addressing the
value chain of knowledge workers is
characterized as patient oriented
 perceiving and addressing the interactions and
interrelationships between the key dimensions of
the worker value chain
 production workers are perceived holistically, and
task requirements needs to be addressed in a
coordinated way by each group of functional
experts
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Organisational Implications
Value Chains of Knowledge Workers (11)
 in my experience the dissatisfaction faced by
knowledge workers has an entirely different
causes:
 often management does not understand the work
process
 or is uninterested in being able to address worker
‘symtoms of dissatisfaction’
 in some cases management actually can end up
deluding themselves into thinking that every thing is
OK
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Organisational Implications
Value Chains of Knowledge Workers (12)
Disease-oriented treatment
 problem specific
 fragmented
 functional independence,
dealing with knowledge
worker independently o
fother functions
Patient-oriented treatment
 worker oriented
 holistic
 coordinated impact of
functional strategies on
knowledge workers
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Data Processing Critical Issues
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Data Processing Critical Issues
1. Layered Architectures & Planning Problems
 the infrastructure is changing but the computing
science theory behind for example client/server
and distributed processing had been around for
decades and has the internet that has propelled
these technologies in recent years
 interestingly decision makers have been very
selective in the ways they use technological
possibilities such as those afforded by the
internet (for example there is no pier-pier
computing is used in organisations
 the real challenges involve the complete
separation of presentation, application, data
across distributed systems…
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Data Processing Critical Issues
…Layered Architectures & Planning Problems
 separating these layered architectures but
there is no way of easily layering these
different types of architecture together
into a single enterprise architecture to
help planners get it all right
 a sterling effort by Zachman (2001) on the
next slide shows how difficult this to
achieve and how difficult these problems
must be to implement in real
organisations
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ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE - A FRAMEWORK
DATA
What
FUNCTION
How
NETWORK
Where
PEOPLE
Who
TIME
When
TM
MOTIVATION
Why
SCOPE
(CONTEXTUAL)
List of Things Important
to the Business
List of Processes the
Business Performs
List of Locations in which
the Business Operates
Planner
ENTITY = Class of
Business Thing
Function = Class of
Business Process
Node = Major Business
Location
e.g. Semantic Model
e.g. Business Process Model
e.g. Business Logistics
System
Ent = Business Entity
Reln = Business Relationship
Proc. = Business Process
I/O = Business Resources
Node = Business Location
Link = Business Linkage
e.g. Logical Data Model
e.g. Application Architecture
e.g. Distributed System
Architecture
e.g. Human Interface
Architecture
e.g. Processing Structure
Ent = Data Entity
Reln = Data Relationship
Proc .= Application Function
I/O = User Views
Node = I/S Function
(Processor, Storage, etc)
Link = Line Characteristics
People = Role
Work = Deliverable
Time = System Event
Cycle = Processing Cycle
End = Structural Assertion
Means =Action Assertion
TECHNOLOGY
MODEL
(PHYSICAL)
e.g. Physical Data Model
e.g. System Design
e.g. Technology Architecture
e.g. Presentation Architecture
e.g. Control Structure
e.g. Rule Design
TECHNOLOGY
MODEL
(PHYSICAL)
Builder
Ent = Segment/Table/etc.
Reln = Pointer/Key/etc.
Proc.= Computer Function
I/O = Data Elements/Sets
Node = Hardware/System
Software
Link = Line Specifications
Time = Execute
Cycle = Component Cycle
End = Condition
Means = Action
Builder
e.g. Data Definition
e.g. Program
e.g. Network Architecture
Ent = Field
Reln = Address
Proc.= Language Stmt
I/O = Control Block
Node = Addresses
Link = Protocols
People = Identity
Work = Job
e.g. DATA
e.g. FUNCTION
e.g. NETWORK
e.g. ORGANIZATION
ENTERPRISE
MODEL
(CONCEPTUAL)
Owner
SYSTEM
MODEL
(LOGICAL)
Designer
DETAILED
REPRESENTATIONS
(OUT-OFCONTEXT)
SubContractor
FUNCTIONING
ENTERPRISE
List of Organizations
Important to the Business
List of Events Significant
to the Business
List of Business Goals/Strat
People = Major Organizations
Time = Major Business Event
Ends/Means=Major Bus. Goal/
Critical Success Factor
e.g. Work Flow Model
e.g. Master Schedule
e.g. Business Plan
Time = Business Event
Cycle = Business Cycle
End = Business Objective
Means = Business Strategy
People = Organization Unit
Work = Work Product
People = User
Work = Screen Format
e.g. Security Architecture
e.g. Timing Definition
Time = Interrupt
Cycle = Machine Cycle
e.g. SCHEDULE
e.g., Business Rule Model
e.g. Rule Specification
End = Sub-condition
Means = Step
e.g. STRATEGY
SCOPE
(CONTEXTUAL)
Planner
ENTERPRISE
MODEL
(CONCEPTUAL)
Owner
SYSTEM
MODEL
(LOGICAL)
Designer
DETAILED
REPRESENTATIONS
(OUT-OF
CONTEXT)
SubContractor
FUNCTIONING
ENTERPRISE
John A. Zachman, Zachman International (810) 231-0531
Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-07:
56
Data Processing Critical Issues
2. Diversification of Skills
 Some literature suggests that future programmers can
be grouped into four categories:
 IS department programmers: declining from 2,000,000 in 1994
to several hundred thousand by 2010- rather than centralised
into EDP centres they are being distributed out into business
units
 Software company programmers: numbers are rise from
600,000 in 1994 to several million by 2010 as a result of more
packaged solutions
 Embedded software programmers: Code embedded in other
consumer goods like cars. Increase from several million in
1994 to 10,000,000 in 2010
 Occasional programmers: Other professions use programming
as part of their duties. Rise from 20 million in 1994 to over 100
million by 2010
Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-07:
57
Data Processing Critical Issues
3. Tower of Babel
 there are now so many languages
(complete, scripting etc) and technologies
that it is simply impossible to find staff
trained in all the necessary issues
 particularly the case in Intranet and
Internet (e-commerce) applications
 the following slide is meant to show the
range of technical options that need to be
covered by IT managers and how
technically difficult this can get for web
enabled applications…
Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-07:
58
Data Processing Critical Issues
Web Database Applications- Components
Browser
Layer
Application
Logic
Layer
External
“helper”
program
HTML Document
CGI program
Proprietary
Web Server
Database
Gateway
Layer
Database
Layer
Java
Application
Java
applet
Vendor’s
Database API
Command-line
interface to
database
Database (RDMS)
Web Server
API module
ODBC
JDBC
Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-07:
59
Data Processing Critical Issues
4. Standardisation versus Innovation…
 we talked about systems software incompatibilities
when describing distributed applications- there is a
powerful disincentive to comply with these
standardisation efforts
 big producers argue:
 big producers generally argue that it is market forces (often
code for ‘marketing force’) that will dictate who succeeds and
who fails
 they will represent the view that standardisation as stifles
innovation- does this remind you of a certain BIG company!
 in general this argument is by those who wish to maintain or
increase their market share and are unwilling to agree to
standards which would be perceived as favouring smaller
producers
Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-07:
60
Data Processing Critical Issues
… Standardisation versus Innovation…
 an interesting aspect is that this kind of argument
plugs into a set of beliefs about people as ‘rational
individuals’ free to choose and consume as they wish
 but of course I like many of you are not free to
consume, we are locked into certain kinds of
purchasing choices because of the market that favours
the producer not the consumer …
 … the tragedy is that I might end up believing that my
choice of a particular word processor is because ‘there
isn’t anything better’ (ie. other people have got the
same word processor so they are likely to load and
read my documents) rather than I really like to use it
Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-07:
61
Data Processing Critical Issues
… Standardisation versus Innovation…
 Small producers want the advantage of
creating products that have a chance of
being adopted widely and are
disadvantaged if a major player in the
market locks up a greater percentage of
its actual market
Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-07:
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References
 Gee, H.(2001) Deep Time: Cladistics, The Revolution
in Evolution London: Fourth Estate
 Gebremedhin, E. (1991) “Distributed Processing:
Concepts and Models” DATAPRO Managing
Information Technology: Technology Issues & Trends
1212, 1-12
 Marchand, D. A. (1990) “Infotrends: A 1990s Outlook
on Strategic Information Management” Information
Management Review 5 (4), Spring
 O’Lone, E. J. and A. Williamson (1991) “Client/Server
Computing” DATAPRO Managing Information
Technology: Technology Issues & Trends 1222, 1-11
Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-07:
63
Acknowledgements
 the author greatly acknowledges the use of material
provided in a research talk developed by Jim McKee,
Department of Information Systems
Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-07:
64
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