Exception handling and structure recasting in distributed process-oriented information systems

The era where business rules are buried in Cobol code is coming to an end, and users themselves may seek to dynamically change their business rules. Customers require systems that more easily adapt to changing business needs, meet their unique requirements, and scale to large and small installations. On the other hand, the same technique is adequate for the slightly different purpose of producing a whole line of software products. Of course, a line of products may be obtained by variously instantiating an abstract model, and by adapting a given initial system to various requirements that appear simultaneously instead of evolving in time. Moreover the diversification of a successful product may also be seen as a form of re-engineering. This paper analyzes the so-called exceptions and adaptive changes in modern enterprise-wide information systems and advocates a generic mechanism for handling them.