The design of a knowledge based component to support information re-engineering

Organizations contemplating the implementation of large scale process redesigns are faced with the initial hurdle of information reengineering. Experience has shown us that poor documentation habits as well as the inability to have a synergistic view of the existing information infrastructure have contributed to major delays and project failures in several cases. This paper provides a new approach for integrating the information generated by data and process models into their object oriented equivalent. This is done by developing a set of heuristics which are based on principles of object oriented design. The heuristics are illustrated by using an example of a vehicle registration system. The ability to convert could possibly resolve some fundamental problems that organizations are currently facing with object oriented technology. They are: educating analysts about object oriented design, reengineering, and achieving tool to tool integration in CASE. The heuristics developed in this paper form the basis for a knowledge based component in a CASE tool to provide support for the above problems.