In: Information Systems, Vol. 19, No. 8, pages 643-660. 1994.
Abstract: INCOME/STAR is an experimental environment for the cooperative development of distributed information systems. This paper presents some of INCOME/STAR's innovative features in the area of information systems engineering: First a new type of high-level Petri nets, so-called Nested Relation/Transition nets (NR/T-nets), is described. NR/T-nets allow the modeling of concurrent processes and related complex structured objects in distributed business applications. New concepts for entity and relationship clustering were developed to support a stepwise top-down approach for Entity/Relationship based object modeling. Distributed multi-user simulation and prototyping are used for the evaluation and analysis of NR/T-nets and the involved object schema. Finally, ProMISE - an evolutionary process model for information system development - is introduced. A role-based groupware component is part of the INCOME/STAR architecture to support communication, organization and social interaction in development projects.
Keywords: NR/T nets, concurrent processes, high-level Petri nets, information systems, nested-relation/transition nets.