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PAVEL HRUBY, Model-Driven Design Using Business Patterns (Berlin and Heidelberg, Germany; New York, NY: Springer, 2006, ISBN: 10 3-540-305154-2, 368, $24.95).
INTRODUCTION
Model-Driven Design Using Business Patterns describes the functional requirements necessary to develop and implement the Resource-Event-Agent (REA) model as a meta-model for specific business applications. When teaching the undergraduate Accounting Information Systems (AIS) course, the book provides useful supplemental material in many areas, most notably in value modeling. Most undergraduate-level AIS textbooks do not provide a framework for value modeling of business process applications; the Hruby book does. Value modeling is important in that it clarifies the meaning of process activities and business applications involving the value chain. Given the current financial crisis, companies have to pay attention to each value contribution in their business processes. Thus, Model-Driven Design Using Business Patterns can be useful when teaching value chain concepts, business process activities, or even internal controls and documentation.
Model-Driven Design Using Business Patterns uses the REA model as the basis to describe the business processes with a focus on actors and resources. Hruby contends that REA provides a greater semantic meaning than double-entry bookkeeping applications, because it stores the primary data about resources at the lowest level to ensure consistency of all financial reports. Thus, process applications are derived from the value models.
This book also can be valuable for applied research purposes. By discussing the impact of strengths and limitations of value models in business process applications, Model-Driven Design Using Business Patterns provides a guideline to compare the presented applications with current non-REA applications in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems within the context of valueoriented semantics. Practically speaking, the book is created to assist both business experts and information system developers through its functional and technical examples and implications.
SYNOPSIS
In Chapters 1 and 2, Hruby introduces the readers to the explanation of REA entities and relationships and their use in business processes. The goal is to get an understanding of the diverse axioms of REA. Hruby defines REA entities and relationships in a detailed way to describe application models governing what events should or should not do under certain conditions. For this reason, the exchanges as...