This Special Issue on Advanced Information Systems Engineering Workshops follows the set of Workshops selected for the 23th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering... Show More

This Special Issue on Advanced Information Systems Engineering Workshops follows the set of Workshops selected for the 23th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2011) which was held in London,UK, June 2011. Following the quality, relevance and reputation of the working context and the rigour of the Workshops selection process, this special issue includes a valuable material: three papers were selected among the best papers of the eleven selected CAiSE Workshops. The papers in this special issue include extensively modified and blind reviewed versions of the three papers that were initially presented at the corresponding workshops, and they conform a new contribution to Information Systems Engineering community. The selected papers focus on conceptualization of modelling methods, information systems security engineering, and business/IT alignment and interoperability. This Special Issue is then targeted at both researchers and practitioners in the Information Systems community with a focus on those three relevant dimensions.

In this paper, the authors put forward an intermediary model that can support the transition between a business model and an IT infrastructure, then provide an example of how the approach can be... Show More

In this paper, the authors put forward an intermediary model that can support the transition between a business model and an IT infrastructure, then provide an example of how the approach can be used. The model is based on a combination of existing models: enterprise architecture and the Business Model Canvas. The authors show how the proposed intermediary model, which has a strong focus on a business model strategy, can help IT alignment. The intermediary model can help alignment from either a business model focus or an IT infrastructure focus because of the correspondence between the two paradigms. The focus on visualization within the intermediary model aids in quickly illustrating the common ground held by the parties involved in the alignment.

Designing a security policy for an information system (IS) is a non-trivial task. Variants of the RBAC model can be used to express such policies as access-control rules associated to constraints.... Show More

Designing a security policy for an information system (IS) is a non-trivial task. Variants of the RBAC model can be used to express such policies as access-control rules associated to constraints. In this paper, we advocate that currently available tools do not take sufficiently into account the functional description of the application and its impact on authorisation constraints and dynamic aspects of security. The authors suggest translating both security and functional models into a formal language, such as B, whose analysis and animation tools will help validate a larger set of security scenarios. The authors describe how various kinds of constraints can be expressed and animated in this context. The authors also present a tool support which performs this translation and report on a case study where animation and testing techniques were used to validate the security policy of a medical emergency information system.

It has been acknowledged that model-based approaches and domain-specific modeling (DSM) languages, methods and tools are beneficial for the engineering of increasingly complex systems and software.... Show More

It has been acknowledged that model-based approaches and domain-specific modeling (DSM) languages, methods and tools are beneficial for the engineering of increasingly complex systems and software. Instead of general-purpose one-size-fits-all modeling languages, DSM methods facilitate model-based analysis and design of complex systems by providing modeling concepts tailored to the specific problem domain. Furthermore, hybrid DSM methods combine single DSM methods into integrated modeling methods, to allow for multi-perspective modeling. Metamodeling platforms provide flexible means for design and implementation of such hybrid modeling methods and appropriate domain-specific modeling tools. In this paper, we report on the conceptualization of a hybrid DSM method in the domain of network physical devices management, and its implementation based on the ADOxx metamodeling platform. The method introduces a hybrid modeling approach. A dedicated DSM language (DSML) is used to model the structure of physical devices and their configurations, whereas the formal language for knowledge representation OWL2 is used to specify configuration-related constraints. The outcome of the work is a hybrid, semantic technology-enabled DSM tool that allows for efficient and consistency-preserving model-based configuration of network equipment.