Conceptual Modeling of Enterprise Content

vom Brocke Jan, Becker Jörg, Simons Alexander, Fleischer Stefan

Abstract
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) has evolved into an absorbing concept for all industrial sectors. It is undisputed that ECM is a requisite technology for meeting issues of compliance, governance, and business process efficiency. However, the high degree of multiplicity and diversity of digital information---nowadays commonly betokend as "content"---makes it difficult to tailor the implementation of ECM systems (ECMS). In this paper we state tha tconceptual models may provide a suitable means for mapping an organization's individual content situation in order to support the structured analysis and design of ECMS. On the basis of a literature review, we derive specific requirements for content modeling and show that these requirements are not met by conventional modeling languages. We present the ECML, the Enterprise Content Modeling Language, which is specified by means of meta-modeling and illustrated on the basis of a simplified application example.

Keywords
Conceptual Modeling; Content Model; Enterprise Content Management (ECM); Enterprise Content Modeling Language (ECML)