Using Semantics to Aid Scenario-Based Analysis

Scenario-based analysis describes customer needs and fo- cuses on dierent aspects of information systems. A scenario typically has several metrics which compute specific information about transaction data, organizational structures and configuration settings. The selection and configuration of metrics is not a trivial task and normally cannot be reused over dierent information systems. Therefore, this paper shows how semantics can aid this process. In fact, the proposed semantically aided analysis approach supports all the five phases of the scenario-based analysis process: (i) selection of metrics relevant to a given scenario, (ii) their configuration and (iii) execution, (iv) evaluation of returned results and (v) reporting of results. Our approach is illustrated by applying it to Reverse Business Engineering, a tool for scenario-based analysis commonly used by commercial ERP systems. However, the proposed ap- proach is general enough to also be applied to other analysis techniques.