Evolving Information Systems: Beyond Temporal Information Systems

Nowadays, in order for an organisation to be competitive, it must be able to adapt quickly to its dynamic environment. In this paper, we discuss the need for information systems which are capable to evolve to the same extent as organisations do. Requirements of evolving organisations on their information systems are identified, followed by alternative approaches to adequate information systems development life cycles. We adopt an evolutionary approach resulting in so-called evolving information systems. On the basis of requirements and an architecture for these evolving information systems, the distinction from traditional information systems is explained. Traditional information systems, including temporal information systems, appear to be degenerations of our evolving information systems. A conceptual framework for update in evolving information systems is derived from the requirements. An event level, a recording level and a correction level are distinguished in this framework for update. 1 Requirements of Evolving Organisations on their Information Systems Nowadays, in order for an organisation to be competitive on the global market place, it must be flexible. The organisation must be able to adapt itself quickly to the production of new or different products changes in the primary process of an organisation and to the ever changing and more and more demanding consumer needs. Due to the dynamic behaviour of organisations, these organisations have to deal with rapidly changing information needs. Given the fact that information is gradually becoming a production factor of more and more importance, it becomes crucial to have information systems which can easily be adapted to the same extent as these information needs change. In this context, it is interesting to note that in the current situation already 42% of all maintenance of information systems is needed for extensions/changes of the information system due to changes of the information needs ([Bem87]). In case of a highly dynamic organisation, this latter percentage is likely to be even higher. (Note that our notion of information systems in this paper is that of information systems in the narrower sense as explained in section 4 and in [Ver89]). Realizing this situation, it can be concluded that information systems are needed which can be adapted to the changing environment in smaller, easier, and more frequent steps than generally it is the case. In The investigations were partly supported by the Foundation for Computer Science in the Netherlands (SION) with financial support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).