A Knowledge-Based Approach to the Analysis and Design of Business Transaction Processing Systems

In this paper, we propose a new approach to theanalysis and design of management information systems.While previous methods were either syntactic in nature(structured analysis and design, problem statementlanguages) or focused on the user-analyst interaction(user-controlled design, prototyping), our method - whilecompatible with both - additionally incorporates theexperiential knowledge gained from the thousands of systemsin operation today.This goal is achieved through providing the systemsanalyst with a business systems architecture (BSA)consisting of two parts: a set of rules representing theknowledge about a generalized application domain, and adomain-specific database architecture that enforces theserules. The rules can also be used to check the design ofexisting systems and to guide the analysis process for newsystems.The paper describes a BSA for transaction processingsystems. The approach can be applied in a similar way toother application domains such as decision support systems