| This book is the first volume of a running series under the title International Handbooks on Information Systems. The series is edited by Peter Bernus, Jacek Blazewicz, Günter Schmidt and Mike Shaw. One objective is to give state of the art surveys on selected topics of information systems theory and applications. To this end, a distinguished international group of academics and practitioners are invited to provide a reference source not only for problem solvers in business, industry, and government but also for professional researchers and graduate students.
It seemed appropriate to start the series with a volume covering some basic aspects about information systems. The focus of the first volume is therefore architectures. It was decided to have a balanced number of contributions from academia and practitioners. The structure of the material follows a differentiation betweeen modelling languages, tools and methodologies. These are collected into separate parts, allowing the reader of the handbook a better comparison of the contributions.
Information systems are a major component of the entire enterprise and the reader will notice that many contributions could just as easily have been included in another volume of the series which is on enterprise integration. Conversely, some traditionally information systems topics, as organisational analysis and strategic change management methods, will be treated in more depth in the Handbook on Enterprise Integration. The two volumes will complement each other.
The second edition of this volume is a representative survey on the most important results on Architectures of Information Systems which are presented by prominent experts. We have to thank not only the contributors for their effort but also various colleagues who helped us by suggesting relevant topics and qualified authors. The editors acknowledge the role of the advisory board members: Andy Bond, Guy Doumeingts, Keith Duddy, Mark Fox, Tom Gruber, Ted Goranson, Rudolf Haggenmüller, Linda Harvey, Matthias Jarke, Jim Melton, Chris Menzel, John Mylopoulos, Elmar J. Sinz, Riitta Smeds, François Vernadat.
One of the challenges was a technical one. We had to compile text and graphics together generated by distributed software systems from all over the world. Jörg Winckler and Anett Wagner for the second edition expertly resolved not only this problem with a number of supporters who are too many to name them all. We sincerely thank them for their help and support. |
