Treffer: PARADIGM SHIFTS AND BUSINESS PROCESSES: A CASE STUDY.

The vast majority of IT systems are implemented using a traditional procedural paradigm approach using a suitable procedural language such as COBOL. However, with recent developments, particularly the trends towards e-Commerce applications and platform independence, many companies are realizing that they will have to re-engineer their systems to meet these trends. The Java language offers many advantages in such a re-engineering process, in particular, good webapplication development capabilities, platform independence for applications and security. However, Java is an Object Oriented language and changing from a procedural to an object based language would represent a fundamental paradigm shift. Such a shift raises concerns as to the ongoing integrity and robustness of the post paradigm-shift business domain. Specifically, there would be a need to investigate the new software paradigms feasibility in terms of its ability to accommodate all essential business processes and functions. Furthermore, possible changes in the emphasis, sequence and method of execution of a business process would be of interest. Software modeling is a cost effective way of determining possible business domain changes for a new software paradigm. This paper investigates the effects on the underlying business model of a company undergoing such a re-engineering process, by utilizing modeling techniques to develop both procedural and Object Oriented models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]