Information engineering

Information engineering (IE) or information engineering methodology (IEM) is a software engineering approach to designing and developing information systems. It can also be considered as the generation, distribution, analysis and use of information in systems.

Overview

Information engineering methodology involves an architectural approach to planning, analyzing, designing, and implementing applications. It has been defined by Steven M Davis as: "An integrated and evolutionary set of tasks and techniques that enhance business communication throughout an enterprise enabling it to develop people, procedures and systems to achieve its vision". It is also defined as the generation, distribution, analysis and use of information in systems. This later definition involves the usage of machine learning, data mining and other computational methods to enhance the presentation and understanding of the high-throughput data that is generated by different systems. An example is bioinformatics, applying information engineering to biological data.

Information engineering has many purposes, including organization planning, business re-engineering, application development, information systems planning and systems re-engineering.

History

Information engineering has a somewhat chequered history that follows two very distinct threads. It originated in Australia between 1976 and 1980, and appears first in the literature in a series of Six InDepth articles by the same name published by US Computerworld in May - June 1981.[1] Information engineering first provided data analysis and database design techniques that could be used by database administrators (DBAs) and by systems analysts to develop database designs and systems based upon an understanding of the operational processing needs of organizations for the 1980s.

Clive Finkelstein is acknowledged as the "Father" of Information Engineering (IE),[2][3] having developed its concepts from 1976 to 1980 based on original work carried out by him to bridge from strategic business planning to information systems. He wrote the first publication on Information Engineering: a series of six InDepth articles by the same name published by US Computerworld in May - June 1981. He also co-authored with James Martin the influential Savant Institute Report titled: "Information Engineering", published in Nov 1981. The Finkelstein thread evolved from 1976 as the business driven variant of IE. The Martin thread evolved into the data processing-driven (DP) variant of IE. From 1983 till 1986 IE evolved further into a stronger business-driven variant of IE, which was intended to address a rapidly changing business environment. The then technical director, Charles M. Richter, from 1983 to 1987, guided by Clive Finkelstein, played a significant role by revamping the IE methodology as well as helping to design the IE software product (user-data) which helped automate the IE methodology, opening the way to next generation Information Architecture.

The Martin thread was database design-driven from the outset and from 1983 was focused on the possibility of automating the development process through the provision of techniques for business description that could be used to populate a data dictionary or encyclopedia that could in turn be used as source material for code generation. The Martin methodology provided a foundation for the CASE (computer-aided software engineering) tool industry. Martin himself had significant stakes in at least four CASE tool vendors - InTech (Excelerator), Higher Order Software, KnowledgeWare, originally Database Design Inc, (Information Engineering Workbench) and James Martin Associates, originally DMW and now Headstrong (the original designers of the Texas Instruments' Information Engineering Facility and the principal developers of the methodology).

At the end of the 1980s and early 1990s the Martin thread incorporated rapid application development (RAD) and business process reengineering (BPR) and soon after also entered the object oriented field. Over this same period the Finkelstein thread evolved further into Enterprise Architecture (EA) and his business-driven IE methods evolved into Enterprise Engineering for the rapid delivery of EA. This is described in his books: "Enterprise Architecture for Integration: Rapid Delivery Methods and Technologies". first edition by Clive Finkelstein (2006) in hardcover. The second edition (2011) is in PDF and as an iBook on the Apple iPad and ebook on the Amazon Kindle.

Information engineering topics

IE variants

There are two variants of information engineering. These are called the DP-driven variant and the business-driven variant.

Business-driven IE is documented in the later books by Clive Finkelstein.

DP-driven Variant of IE

Business-driven Variant of IE for Rapid Delivery

IE techniques

Some techniques that are used during an IE project are:

Software tools

There are several tools supporting Information engineering

Other tools include Bachman's Data Analyst, Excelerator, and more. See computer-aided software engineering.

References

  1. "Information engineering," part 3, part 4, part 5, Part 6" by Clive Finkelstein. In Computerworld, In depths, appendix. May 25 - june 15, 1981.
  2. Christopher Allen, Simon Chatwin, Catherine Creary (2003). Introduction to Relational Databases and SQL Programming.
  3. Terry Halpin, Tony Morgan (2010). Information Modeling and Relational Databases. p. 343

Further reading

External links

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