Policy-Level Specifications in REA Enterprise Information Systems

Abstract

The Resource-Event-Agent (REA) enterprise model is a widely accepted framework for the design of the accountability infrastructure of enterprise information systems. Policy-level specifications define constraints and guidelines under which an enterprise operates, and they are an extension to the REA enterprise model, adding the “what should, could, or must be” to the “what is.” This paper aims both at comprehensive understanding of policy-level definitions as part of REA enterprise systems and at understanding of the semantic constructs that enable such definitions. We first explore two distinctive semantic abstractions essential to policy-level specifications: typification and grouping. The typification abstraction links instances of an object class to concepts for which they are concrete realizations, while the grouping abstraction aggregates objects into collections. We next present a number of patterns for the semantic modeling of policies. Following, we look at policy-level applications for REA enterprise information systems. We explore type and grouping definitions for the REA primitives (resource, event, agent) and discuss enterprise applications for three different kinds of policy definitions: knowledge-intensive descriptions, validation rules, and target descriptions. Our discussion of specific enterprise applications includes internal control applications (e.g., limit checks), variance analysis based on standard specifi-cations (e.g., bills of materials), and budgeting applications.

Transaction Based Business Process Modeling

“…One belongs to the commitment entities and the other to the event entities. It is said that there is mirroring between event and commitment structures [2]. Both structures relate to agent and resource entities.…”

“…The first variation represents the operational level of the REA model, whereas the second variation stands for both the operational and policy levels. The first variation enables the modeling of current and past economic events, whereas the second variation also enables the modeling of past, current and future events, described in [2]. Economic events, as a basic part of the REA transactions, must be identified first.…”

Business Model Design An Evaluation of Paper-based and Computer-Aided Canvases

“…In (Nakamura and Johnson, 1998) the Type Object pattern (Johnson and Woolf, 1997) is introduced to describe REA models-this notation is picked up also in (Hrubỳ et al, 2006;Geerts and McCarthy, 2006): REA concepts are described on a type and on an object layer, where instances on type layer define common properties for instances on the object layer. Also, this typification is used as a business model notation: in case a specific REA entity cannot be noted explicitly, its type object is used as a specification for what kind of entity would take part in a certain business pattern.…”

Ontology-based standards development: Application of OntoStanD to ebXML business process specification schema

“…A clear example of such a model is the ResourceEvent-Agent Enterprise (REA) Ontology which provides "a pattern for the semantic definition of business processes" (Geerts and McCarthy, 2002;Geerts and McCarthy, 2006). While REA was initially designed to provide a new conceptual foundation to accounting (McCarthy, 1982), the framework has grown.…”