Jan Dietz
Encyclopedia
Jean Leonardus Gerardus (Jan) Dietz (20 June 1945) is a Dutch
computer scientist
, and former Professor of Information Systems Design at Delft University of Technology
.
. He obtained a M.A. in Electrical Engineering
in 1970 at Eindhoven University of Technology
, and later in 1987 a PhD on the subject of modeling and specifying information systems
.
Dietz worked as practitioner in the field of automation and information systems from 1970 to 1980. Here he developed one of the first relational model
based production control system
s at Philips
Factories, a state of the art computer accounting system at Eindhoven University of Technology, and a terminal-based, interactive theatre reservation system. In 1980 he returned to academia. After he obtained his Doctoral Degree in 1987 he was appointed Professor of Management Information Systems at the University of Maastricht in the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, where he started the development of the DEMO theory and methodology. From September 1994 to Oct 2009 he was Professor of Information Systems Design at Delft University of Technology
. Since then he is parttime Professor of Enterprise Engineering
at the Instituto Superior Técnico
(IST - Technical University of Lisbon).
Dietz has held several managerial positions in organizing these courses. He has held several commissionerships and he has been chairman of the Dutch national professional association of informaticians. Next to that he is and has been member of the editorial board of numerous journals and of the program committee of numerous conferences. He has been the Dutch national representative in IFIP TC8 on Information Systems for many years and is member of IFIP WG8.1 on design and Evaluation of Information Systems.
s, and in the development of ICT-applications to support them. In the new millennium Dietz has focussed on the emerging field of Enterprise engineering
, which emerged in between information systems engineering
and the organizational sciences
.
In 2006 he published a book on Enterprise Ontology , and is continuing working on Enterprise Architecture
. To promote these ideas he initiated an international network under the name "Cooperation & Interoperability - Architecture & Ontology" (CIAO).
. It was introduced in the field of information systems by the computer scientists Fernando Flores and J.J. Ludlow early 1980s has "proven to be a new basic paradigm for Information Systems Design. In contrast to traditional views of "data flow", the language/action perspective emphasizes what people do while communicating, how they create a common reality by means of language, and how communication brings about a coordination of their activities".
In DEMO the basic pattern of a business transaction is composed of the following three phases:
Basic transactions can be composed to account for complex transactions. The DEMO methodology gives the analyst an understanding of the business processes of the organization, as well as the agents involved, but is less clear about pragmatics aspects of the transaction, such as the conversation structure and the intentions generated in each agents mind.
Jan Dietz is the founder of the DEMO, and he is also co-founder and chairman of the DEMO Knowledge Center and he has participated in numerous practical DEMO-projects regarding the redesign and reengineering of organizations. Since early 2004 he is also the leader of the national research program Extensible Architecture Framework.
The identification of business components seems still to be in its infancy. The notion of enterprise ontology, as developed by Jan Dietz at Delft University of Technology
, appears to be a powerful revelation of the essence of an enterprise or an enterprise network. Dietz' research seeks to improve the identification of business components based on the ontological model of an enterprise
, while at the same time satisfying well defined quality criteria. The results of applying the developed identification method are reusable and self-contained business components with well defined interaction points that facilitate the accessing and execution of coherent packages of business functionality.
Articles, chapters and papers, a selection:
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
computer scientist
Computer scientist
A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....
, and former Professor of Information Systems Design at Delft University of Technology
Delft University of Technology
Delft University of Technology , also known as TU Delft, is the largest and oldest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands...
.
Biography
Jan Dietz was born in 1945 in BrunssumBrunssum
Brunssum is a municipality and a town in the province of Limburg, the Netherlands. Brunssum was formerly a center of coal mining in the Netherlands and there are a few active mines remaining in the area...
. He obtained a M.A. in Electrical Engineering
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...
in 1970 at Eindhoven University of Technology
Eindhoven University of Technology
The ' is a university of technology located in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The motto of the university is: Mens agitat molem . The university was the second of its kind in the Netherlands, only Delft University of Technology existed previously. Until mid-1980 it was known as the...
, and later in 1987 a PhD on the subject of modeling and specifying information systems
Information systems
Information Systems is an academic/professional discipline bridging the business field and the well-defined computer science field that is evolving toward a new scientific area of study...
.
Dietz worked as practitioner in the field of automation and information systems from 1970 to 1980. Here he developed one of the first relational model
Relational model
The relational model for database management is a database model based on first-order predicate logic, first formulated and proposed in 1969 by Edgar F...
based production control system
Control system
A control system is a device, or set of devices to manage, command, direct or regulate the behavior of other devices or system.There are two common classes of control systems, with many variations and combinations: logic or sequential controls, and feedback or linear controls...
s at Philips
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....
Factories, a state of the art computer accounting system at Eindhoven University of Technology, and a terminal-based, interactive theatre reservation system. In 1980 he returned to academia. After he obtained his Doctoral Degree in 1987 he was appointed Professor of Management Information Systems at the University of Maastricht in the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, where he started the development of the DEMO theory and methodology. From September 1994 to Oct 2009 he was Professor of Information Systems Design at Delft University of Technology
Delft University of Technology
Delft University of Technology , also known as TU Delft, is the largest and oldest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands...
. Since then he is parttime Professor of Enterprise Engineering
Enterprise engineering
Enterprise engineering is a subdiscipline of systems engineering, which applies the knowledge and methods of systems engineering to the design of businesses. The discipline examines each aspect of the enterprise, including business processes, information flows, and organizational structure...
at the Instituto Superior Técnico
Instituto Superior Técnico
Instituto Superior Técnico is a reputed school of engineering, part of Universidade Técnica de Lisboa . IST is the largest and the most prestigious school of engineering in Portugal...
(IST - Technical University of Lisbon).
Dietz has held several managerial positions in organizing these courses. He has held several commissionerships and he has been chairman of the Dutch national professional association of informaticians. Next to that he is and has been member of the editorial board of numerous journals and of the program committee of numerous conferences. He has been the Dutch national representative in IFIP TC8 on Information Systems for many years and is member of IFIP WG8.1 on design and Evaluation of Information Systems.
Work
Dietz' main research interests is in modeling, design and redesigning and engineering and reengineering of organizationOrganization
An organization is a social group which distributes tasks for a collective goal. The word itself is derived from the Greek word organon, itself derived from the better-known word ergon - as we know `organ` - and it means a compartment for a particular job.There are a variety of legal types of...
s, and in the development of ICT-applications to support them. In the new millennium Dietz has focussed on the emerging field of Enterprise engineering
Enterprise engineering
Enterprise engineering is a subdiscipline of systems engineering, which applies the knowledge and methods of systems engineering to the design of businesses. The discipline examines each aspect of the enterprise, including business processes, information flows, and organizational structure...
, which emerged in between information systems engineering
Information systems
Information Systems is an academic/professional discipline bridging the business field and the well-defined computer science field that is evolving toward a new scientific area of study...
and the organizational sciences
Organizational studies
Organizational studies, sometimes known as organizational science, encompass the systematic study and careful application of knowledge about how people act within organizations...
.
In 2006 he published a book on Enterprise Ontology , and is continuing working on Enterprise Architecture
Enterprise architecture
An enterprise architecture is a rigorous description of the structure of an enterprise, which comprises enterprise components , the externally visible properties of those components, and the relationships between them...
. To promote these ideas he initiated an international network under the name "Cooperation & Interoperability - Architecture & Ontology" (CIAO).
Design & Engineering Methodology for Organizations
Inspired on the Language Action Perspective in the 1980s Dietz has been developing a methodology for transaction modelling, and analysing and representing business processes called "Design & Engineering Methodology for Organizations" (DEMO). The Language Action Perspective itself is largely based on the speech act theory developed by John SearleJohn Searle
John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.-Biography:...
. It was introduced in the field of information systems by the computer scientists Fernando Flores and J.J. Ludlow early 1980s has "proven to be a new basic paradigm for Information Systems Design. In contrast to traditional views of "data flow", the language/action perspective emphasizes what people do while communicating, how they create a common reality by means of language, and how communication brings about a coordination of their activities".
In DEMO the basic pattern of a business transaction is composed of the following three phases:
- An actagenic phase during which a client requests a fact form the supplier agent.
- The action execution which will generate the required fact
- A facagenic phase, which leads the client to accept the results reported
Basic transactions can be composed to account for complex transactions. The DEMO methodology gives the analyst an understanding of the business processes of the organization, as well as the agents involved, but is less clear about pragmatics aspects of the transaction, such as the conversation structure and the intentions generated in each agents mind.
Jan Dietz is the founder of the DEMO, and he is also co-founder and chairman of the DEMO Knowledge Center and he has participated in numerous practical DEMO-projects regarding the redesign and reengineering of organizations. Since early 2004 he is also the leader of the national research program Extensible Architecture Framework.
Enterprise Ontology
Enterprise Ontology is about the need to develop organizational models on a high-level of abstraction, in order to be able to develop effective and efficient, so called, inter- and intra-enterprise information systems. These models need to be so that it is understood both by business people, who are defining their functionality, and software engineers, who are constructing and implementing the software systems that realize the system's functionality. The idea of business components for modeling information systems is very valuable since they directly reflect the business rules and the constraints that apply to the enterprise domain.The identification of business components seems still to be in its infancy. The notion of enterprise ontology, as developed by Jan Dietz at Delft University of Technology
Delft University of Technology
Delft University of Technology , also known as TU Delft, is the largest and oldest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands...
, appears to be a powerful revelation of the essence of an enterprise or an enterprise network. Dietz' research seeks to improve the identification of business components based on the ontological model of an enterprise
Business
A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...
, while at the same time satisfying well defined quality criteria. The results of applying the developed identification method are reusable and self-contained business components with well defined interaction points that facilitate the accessing and execution of coherent packages of business functionality.
Publications
Dietz has published over 200 scientific and professional papers as well as several books: Books:- 1996. Communication Modeling - The Language/Action Perspective: Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Communication Modeling, Tilburg, the Netherlands... (Electronic Workshops in Computing). With Frank Dignum, Egon Verharen, and Hans Weigand. Springer ISBN 3540761187
- 2006. Enterprise Ontology - Theory and Methodology. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. ISBN 3540291695
- 2008. Advances in Enterprise Engineering I: 4th International Workshop CIAO! and 4th International Workshop EOMAS, held at CAiSE 2008, Montpellier, France, June 2008. Notes in Business Information Processing. With Antonia Albani, and Joseph Barjis (eds.). Springer. ISBN 3540686436
- 2008. Architecture - Building strategy into design. Academic Service. ISBN 978-90-12-58086-1
Articles, chapters and papers, a selection:
- 1989. "Modeling of Discrete Dynamic Systems - Framework and Examples". With K.M. van Hee and G.J. Houben. In: Information Systems. Vol. 14, no.4, pp 277–289.
- 1991. "Speech Acts or Communicative Action?" With G.A.M. Widdershoven. In: L. Bannon (eds.) Proceedings of the Second European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work ECSCW'91. Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1991, pp. 235–248.
- 1992. "Subject-Oriented Modelling of Open Active Systems". In: E.D. Falkenberg (eds.). Information Systems Concepts: Improving the Understanding. IFIP Transactions A-4, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1992, pp. 227–238.
- 1994. "Modelling business processes for the purpose of redesign". In: Proceedings of the IFIP TC8 Open Conference on Business Process Re-engineering: Information Systems Opportunities and Challenges. IFIP Transactions; Vol. A-54. pp. 233–242.
- 1998. "Understanding and Modelling Business Processes with DEMO". In: Proc. 18th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER'99), Paris, 1999.
- 1998. "Linguistically based Conceptual Modeling of Business Communication". With: A.A.G. Steuten and R.P. van de Riet. In: Proc. 4th International Conference NLDB '99, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 129, Springer-Verlag 1999.
- 2002. "Development of Agent-based E-commerce Systems using the semiotic approach and the DEMO transaction concept". With J. Barjis, S. Chong and K. Lui. In: Internation journal of information technology & decision making. Vol. 1, No. 3 (September 2002),
- 2006. "The pragmatic web: a manifesto". With Mareike Schoop and Aldo de Moor. In: Communications of the ACM. Vol 49, Iss 5 (May 2006). pp.75–76.