UML 2.0 in Action A Project-Based Tutorial

2.3 Information Systems and IT Systems

In almost all occupations, part of the job is dealing with information. It has been this way for thousands of years and is one of the reasons behind the development of writing. Some of the oldest texts found in Europe include, for instance, stock lists from the palace of Knossos in Crete. If we were able to watch the stock managers work as they did 3,500 years ago, we could probably map the business processes that people followed back then. We could see that these people were dealing with suppliers and buyers, that they were exchanging goods, and that they kept written records of their business activities. The same was true for a Roman olive merchant 1,500 years later, for a Hanseatic merchant's trading office ...