A generic constraints-based framework for business modeling

Abstract

The potential benefits of logic-based modeling methods encourage business organizations to construct models offering flexible knowledge representation supported by correct and effective inference. However, owing to the problems of encoding expertise, the ambiguities in business concept formulation and the diversity of possible evaluation methods, there is no clear consensus on how best to apply logic-based formalization to informal or semi-formal business modeling. Our work aims to build a formal generic model framework comprised of sub-models that formulate distinct core aspects of business. The framework employs logical constraints to represent and compute the key relations among business entities, and offers scope for clarifying the semantics of other existing frameworks by translating them into this one. The paper outlines our framework and presents a synthetic case study to illustrate its nature and operation. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.