Dialogs and Interaction Schema: Characterizing the Interaction Space of Information Systems

Information systems design concern modeling systems that are dynamic in nature. A dynamic system essentially has two dimensions of concern – static structure and dynamic behavior. The existence of dynamics – or interactions among parts of the system distinguish a dynamic system from a heap or collection of parts. Specification and management of the static aspects of an information system like the data and metadata have been fairly well addressed by existing paradigms. However an understanding of the dynamic nature of information systems is still low. Currently most paradigms model behavioral properties above an existing structural model, resulting in what may be called “entity centric” modeling. Such a kind of modeling would neglect properties that can be attributed to behavioral processes themselves, and relationships that might exist among such processes. In this paper, we address behavioral modeling by first considering system behavior to be in the form of an abstract “interaction space,” that depicts the domain of information system behavior. A new paradigm called “dialogs” is also proposed, which depicts semantic interactive processes existing in the interaction space; and an “interaction schema” as a characterization of the interaction space.