Business specifications are used to describe and understand businesses (and, in particular, business rules) independently of any computing systems used for their possible automation. They have to express this understanding in a simple, clear, precise, and explicit way, in order to provide the essential common ground between business domain experts and software developers. It follows that, for example, business specifications do not have to provide an owner for system state or behavior (as in message passing): such owners are required by legacy OO approaches which have nothing to do with business specifications. Precise specification of semantics - as opposed to just signatures - is essential not only for business specifications, but also for business designs and system specifications. In particular, it is needed for appropriate handling of viewpoints which exist both horizontally - within the same frame of reference, such as within a business specification - and vertically - within different frames of reference. In order to handle the complexity of a (new or existing) large system, it must be considered, on the one hand, as a composition of separate viewpoints, and on the other hand, as an integrated whole, probably at a different abstraction level. Concepts and constructs ("patterns") common to all, or a large number of, businesses are being specified for reuse, leading to savings in intellectual effort, time and money. Moreover, precise business patterns, such as "composition-containment     «

Business specifications are used to describe and understand businesses (and, in particular, business rules) independently of any computing systems used for their possible automation. They have to express this understanding in a simple, clear, precise, and explicit way, in order to provide the essential common ground between business domain experts and software developers. It follows that, for example, business specifications do not have to provide an owner for system state or behavior (as in mes...     »