Abstract
We present an approach to the construction of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems, which is based on the Resources, Events and Agents (REA) ontology. This framework deals with processes involving exchange and flow of resources in a declarative, graphically-based manner describing what the major entities are rather than how they engage in computations. We show how to develop a domain-specific language on the basis of REA, and a tool which automatically can generate running web-applications. A main contribution is a proof-of-concept showing that business-domain experts can generate their own applications without worrying about implementation details.
In order to have a well-defined domain-specific language, a formal model of REA has been developed using the specification language Object-Z and this led to clarifications as well as the introduction of new concepts. The compiler for our language is written in Objective CAML and as implementation platform we used Ruby on Rails. Our aim here is to give an overview of whole construction of a running application from a REA specification and to illustrate the adequacy of the development process.
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Schultz-Møller, N.P., Hølmer, C., Hansen, M.R. (2009). Declarative Business Process Modelling and the Generation of ERP Systems. In: Cordeiro, J., Shishkov, B., Ranchordas, A., Helfert, M. (eds) Software and Data Technologies. ICSOFT 2008. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 47. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-05201-9_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-05201-9_11
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