Business

Many computer systems are based on various types of messages, forms, or other objects. When users of such systems need to communicate with people who use different object types, some kind of translation is necessary. In this paper, we explore the space of general solutions to this translation problem and propose a scheme that synthesizes these solutions. After first illustrating the problem in the Object Lens system, we identify two partly conflicting objectives that any translation scheme should satisfy: preservation of meaning and autonomous evolution of group languages. Then we partition the space of possible solutions to this problem in terms of the set theoretic relations between group languages and a common language. This leads to five primary solution classes and we illustrate and evaluate each one. Finally, we describe a composite scheme, called Partially Shared Views, that combines many of the best features of the other schemes. A key insight of the analysis is that partial...

Object-oriented analysis and design methods take full advantage of the object specialization hierarchy when it comes to modeling the objects in a system. When modeling system behavior, however, system analysts continue to rely on traditional tools such as state diagrams and dataflow diagrams. While such diagrams capture important aspects of the processes they model, they offer limited guidance as to the ways in which a process can be improved. In this paper we extend the notion of specialization to process representations and identify a set of transformations which, when applied to a process description, always result in specialization. We analyze specific examples in detail and demonstrate that such a use of specialization is not only theoretically possible, but shows promise as a method for categorizing and analyzing processes. This paper makes two contributions toward answering this question: first, it articulates a formal definition of process specialization which is compatible ...