A Representation Theorem for Change through Composition of Activities

Abstract

The expanding use of information systems in industrial and commercial settings has increased the need for interoperation between software systems. In particular, many social, industrial, and business information systems require a common basis for a seamless exchange of complex process information. This is, however, inhibited, because different systems may use distinct terminologies or assume different meanings for the same terms. A common solution to this problem is to develop logical theories that act as an intermediate language between different parties. In this article, we characterize a class of activities that can act as intermediate languages between different parties in those cases. We show that for each domain with finite number of elements there exists a class of activities, we called canonical activities, such that all possible changes within the domain can be represented as a sequence of occurrences of those activities. We use an algebraic structure for representing change and characterizing canonical activities, which enables us to abstract away domain-dependent properties of processes and activities, and demonstrate general properties of formalisms required for semantic integration of dynamic information systems.