Context modeling of agile software and a contextbased approach to support virtual enterprises

Abstract

In the practice of software development contexts have been only implicitly modeled and transformed in fixed part of software. The information about context is dispersed in objects across the application. Each context change leads to modification or new development of the software.The context modeling helps developer to separate context objects from contextdependent objects. It allows better reuse of analysis, design and implementation models, if the context of certain objects is changed. The context modeling is interesting and necessary, when the software should be agile - i.e. when the environment and the condition of the software could be changed permanently, e.g. in case of platform for virtual enterprises. The paper introduces a novel approach to support processes within generic platforms for virtual enterprises: the context-based approach. The main advantage of the approach lies in its generic capacity, which allows the users to define processes flexibly to support their own enterprises.In this paper, we discuss further the phenomenon of extra-context logic, its modeling and its application case. The information of extra-context logic provides not only the better understanding of application domain, but also can be used by a wizard to support the interaction of users working with multiple systems.