(A) study on rule-based form model for flexible change management

Abstract

With the development of network technology, the electronic data exchange plays an important role in business. Internet accelerates it with ubiquitous accessibility and low development cost. The electronic data exchange uses a form, a structured document as an interface. The electronic form can represent business rules more actively than paper form. The changes in business such as business policy, strategy, and organizational structure, provoke forms used in the business to change. The change management in form is difficult because it is usually done in source code level. In this thesis, a rule-based form model to support change management is proposed. The model is composed of contents, layout, and rule. The contents represent data structure and the layout takes charge of the presentation of a form. The rules based on form are designed to represent business rules. There are dependencies among contents, layout and rule. With these dependencies, the mechanism of change propagation is represented. The design of rule-based form management system and form editor is also proposed.