This paper identifies the organizational context variables affecting the success and failure of MIS. The variables are categorized as uncontrollable, partially controllable and controlled, and a co...

Organizational Context and the Success of Management Information Systems

A survey of techniques and tools used in filing systems, database systems, and operating systems for recovery, backing out, restart, the mamtenance of consistency, and for the provismn of crash resistance is given. A particular view on the use of recovery techmques in a database system and a categorization of different kinds of recovery and recovery techmques and basic principles are presented. The purposes for which these recovery techniques can be used are described Each recovery techmque is illustrated by examples of its application in exmtlng systems described in the literature. A main conclusion from this survey is that the recovery techmques described are all useful; they are applied for different purposes and m different envLronments. However, a certain trend in the increasing use of specific techniques during the past few years can be noted. Another main conclusion is that there are still enormous integrity and recovery problems to be solved for parallel processes and distributed processing.

Recovery Techniques for Database Systems

The author describes a model and notation for specifying and enforcing aspects of integrity policies, particularly separation of duties. The key idea is to associate a transaction control expression with each information object. The transaction control expression constrains the pattern in which transactions can be executed on an object. As operations are actually executed the transaction control expressions gets converted to a history. This history serves to enforce separation of duties. Transient objects with a short lifetime are distinguished from persistent objects which are long-lived. Separation of duties is achieved by maintaining a complete history for transient objects but only a partial history for persistent objects. This is possible because of the system-enforced rule that transactions are executed on persistent objects only as a side effect of execution on transient objects. >

Transaction control expressions for separation of duties

The attention of the computer user community is increasingly focusing on data bases and computerized information systems because of two converging trends. Computerized information systems are coming to play an essential role in business operations, and the hardware and software technology for supporting information systems is in a period of rapid technical progress. In spite of this attention, there is still little common agreement as to what information systems are, the functions they perform, and — from a technical point of view -how they should be designed, implemented, installed, and used. These conditions arise naturally from the newness of the field and the ad hoc nature of existing Computerized implementations. A compounding factor is the wide variety of perspectives of those who discuss information systems — for example, the executive, the management consultant, the systems analyst, the mathematician, and the systems programmer. In this paper, we emphasize aspects of information systems that are of importance to systems analysts, systems designers, and implementors.

Data structures and accessing in data-base systems: I evolution of information systems

We describe a novel general-purpose mechanism for enforcing separation of duties in computerized information systems. This mechanism of transaction control expressions has close similarities to traditional controls in manual paper-based systems. It has the great bene t of intuitive simplicity, in both concept and implementation.

Separation of Duties in Computerized Information Systems.

Through a nationwide network of interactive terminals in a teleprocessing configuration, users perform over twenty major business functions by sharing a single large and varied data base.

Emphasized are system design principles of the central complex whereby terminal message processing and data-base management are independently yet cooperatively performed.

Also discussed is system security, which includes user authorization and data-base reconstruction and auditing.

J. H. Wimbrow

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