Graphical model of the dependence between the rules of business and the physical / financial impact on maintenance

• Grant number: 01/13400-0
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Innovative Research in Small Business - PIPE
• Start date: February 01, 2003
• End date: April 30, 2008
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Computer Science - Computing Methodologies and Techniques
• Principal Investigator: Valdirene Fontanette
• Grantee: Valdirene Fontanette
• Company: Apyon Technology S/A

Abstract

The most critical stages of the development of systems are their design and implementation. In the project, user interfaces, rules of business and physical models are specified. The rules of business are all the calculations, assumptions, validations, procedures and events of a system. These rules are specified in natural language, normally without standardization. Following this stage, they are sent to the programmers, who are going to transform the specifications into source code in some programming language. The main problem existing in this process is that the rules are inter-dependent and the analysis of impact of a change in one rule is a repetitive, manual task, and prone to mistakes. Frequently the dependence is not explicit, since it occurs only in certain specific conditions, which demands interpretation and knowledge of business on the part of the systems analyst. The objective of this work is to facilitate the search for the dependencies of the rules of business, helping the systems analyst evaluate the impact of a business change, as much in the volume of work required as in the number of physical and human resources necessary. In phase 1 a functional prototype was developed of an application to show visually the dependencies between the rules of business and also the physical and financial impact of the alterations and evolutions in the specifications. In phase 2 this prototype will be finalized, documented and totally integrated into Apyon Studio, which is a productivity tool that permits specification at a high level of abstraction and also permits the generation of the part related to the technology of an information system. The result of phase 2 should be the commercialization of a product to be integrated into Apyon Studio. (AU)