Distributed business and administration information systems

Motivation:

Different component-based development platforms (Baan(Baan IV), Compuware(UNIFACE), DEC(Forte), Lotus(Lotus Notes) and others) give IT organizations the ability to build strategic applications quickly and efficiently. Its request-broker architecture operates across all major platforms and allows the deployment of different components. This ability to work with existing components means that IT organizations can re-engineer and renew their applications one component or subsystem at a time, instead of developing them from scratch for each new business or technology requirement.

Component-based development is a rapidly-evolving paradigm that increases productivity and cuts the cost of developing strategic applications. The use of components reduces time-to-market, leverages investments in development, technology and skills, and maximizes the return on investment over the application lifetime. Proponents of componentized applications predict huge cost-savings as more and more project managers use this approach. The application development marketplace is undergoing major changes in its evolution toward the component paradigm. Developers have more freedom to choose best-of-breed tools to construct individual application components, and a new level of development environment emerges to assemble these components seamlessly into applications. Moreover, the assembled applications will be deployable across all mainstream execution environments, regardless of the component construction tool or interface definition standards favored by individual vendors or users. For component-based development to reach its full potential, vendors of so-called application assembly environments must not only provide this functionality, but also the assembly expertise and ready-made "componentware" to rapidly deliver this new breed of application.

Compuware, Lotus and others offer exciting new capabilities for component-based development, deployment and delivery. The UNIFACE, Lotus Notes Designer, Oracle 2000 environments support both application assembly and construction for deployment across all major platforms.

Aim:

Objectives:

• analyse and design a general information system model of business and administration systems in a decentralised environment
• understand and realise the business environmental factors influencing information system structure and behaviour
• apply the suitable information system analysing and design methods, tools and techniques
• understand the client-server computation model of business software
• evaluate and select an appropriate 4GL, and implement it successfully
• design and implement simple business applications using 4GL tool
• understand the necessity of EDI (Electronic Data Interchange)

Approach:

Prerequisites:

• Distributed information system from a management perspective, distributed information system development methods

[AppDev], [ClSrv]
• organisation challenges an opportunities
• driving forces in ‘90’s
• Information Intensive Organisation model
• distributed information system and technology (management perspective)
• components of DIS
• advantage and disadvantage of DIS
• DIS development methods
• open development processing model
• 3 - schema Specification Architecture
• SSADM extension
• management decision criteria
• DIS design tools and techniques
• information system architecture
• information system modelling
• CASE tools in IS/IT modelling
• PowerBuilder and the distributed information system
• creating PowerBuilder application
• distributed PowerBuilder
• advanced PowerBuilder
• Data warehousing and the vertical organisation integration
• functional taxonomy of IT based information systems
• management information system (MIS)
• executive information system (EIS)
• decision support system (DSS)
• data warehouse, data mart, data mining,
• OLAP technology
• case studies
• 4GL programming/UNIFACE

The application development environment using fourth-generation languages (4GL) and event-driven programming. Historical background, reasons for using a 4GL and components of a 4GL. UNIFACE application environment: client/server, Internet.
• Introduction and Modelling
• Form development
• Triggers
• Proc Language
• Proc functions, Services, Reports
• UNIFACE and the Web
• Deployment and Assembly
• EDI a new business paradigm
• basic assumptions, definitions
• strategic importance initials
• benefits of EDI
• technical aspects of EDI
• standards
• legal aspects of EDI

1. Distributed information system from a management perspective, distributed information system development methods by Prof. Dr. Péter Lõrincz
   56 pages Zipped Winword (48k), Gzipped Postscript (92k),
   Appendix A: 1 page Zipped Windowd (5k), Gzipped Postcript (6k),
   Appendix B: 4 pages Zipped Winword (8k), Gzipped Postscript (15k)
2. DIS design tools and techniques
3. Data warehousing and the vertical organisation integration
   Data Warehouse OLAP Data Mining by Prof. Dr. Péter Lõrincz
   200 slide Zipped PowerPoint (697k)
4. 4GL programming/UNIFACE

183 pages WinZipped-Winword7(790k) by Balázs Dobos, dr. Zoltán László, Péter Orvos, Dániel Valkó
5. EDI a new business paradigm

31 pages Powerpoint (367k) by dr. Klára Konrád
6. Distributed Application Development with Power Builder
   ? pages Zipped RTF (389k) by Magda Kovács
7. e-businnes, e-commerce by Etelka Kovács
   42 slides Zipped Powepoint (632k)

References, Literature

[ClSRv]Simon, E.: Distributed Systems, From Client/Server to Distributed Multimedia
McGraw Hill Co. 1996

[EssGu] Robert Orfali, Dan Harkey, Jeri Edwards: The Essential Client/Server Survival Guide
Wiley, 1996

[Fourth] James Martin: Fourth generation languages

[4GL] W. Gregory Wojtkowski: 4Gl Programming: Tools and Methods
1995

[Use4] John A. Buckland: Use of fourth generation languages

[4GS] Simon Holloway (Editor): Fourth-Generation Systems: Their Scope, Applications and Methods of Evaluation
Chapman & Hall, 1990

[UNIref] UNIFACE V7.1 Reference Manual
[UNIpr] UNIFACE V7.1 Proc Language Reference Manual
Compuware Corporation, 1996